QPR's progressive manager Mark Hughes faces day of reckoning as his team face fellow strugglers Reading Through no fault of his own, he happened to be at Manchester City at a very tumultuous time, and since then he has been looking for the right job. The problem is that the best openings do not come around very often, and in the meantime you need to build and consolidate your reputation. Hughes continues to be a source of fascination: courageous as a player but unfulfilled as a manager, charismatic on the pitch and yet intensely guarded away from it. So just what type of person, amid QPR's distracting turmoil, is he? A glimpse of his backroom staff provides some precious illumination of his character. For Hughes is renowned for bringing a coterie of trusted deputies to his managerial positions. Mark Bowen, his Neath-born right-hand man, has been everpresent since 1999, assuming an integral role in player recruitment. At QPR the celebrated former Tottenham left-back is the invariably the figure observing coaching sessions alongside Hughes, paying particular attention to the defence of set pieces. The two Marks have been friends ever since childhood, projecting a powerful sense of Welsh solidarity. Little wonder they have acquired a reputation as the "Taffia," even if Bowen has been keen to downplay any sense of dependence: "When Mark gets offered a job, it is not as if he has five people outside his door with prayer mats, saying, "Please take us with you."" Such is Hughes" natural circumspection, it can be a protracted task trying to infiltrate his circle of trust, but once accomplished there is the potential to be his lieutenant for life. "Mark is a man of old-fashioned values," Horne argues. He never gives those who do not know him more than he needs to, but he is fiercely loyal to those closest to him. Eddie Niedzwiecki, the first-team coach, discovered as much, first joining his friend's Wales set-up on a part-time basis and finding himself retained ever since. Such is the belief invested in him by the manager that he is allowed to take first-team training essentially on his own. According to Hughes, "The quality of the sessions that Eddie puts on is so high that I would only ruin the performance, and therefore the stats, by taking part. So I stay away and rely on my memories. The description of Niedzwiecki's methods by QPR players - "demanding, but rewarding" - echoes the influence of Hughes. Data on every player is analysed, en route to determining the intensity of each work-out. For Hughes is a manager forged in the ProZone era of sports science, believing passionately that software and highly-refined equipment can be harnessed to improve player fitness, in a system known as KPI (Key Performance Indicators). It is this immersion in the minutiae that sharpens the sense of paradox around Hughes. While his Blackburn sides were often harshly criticised as one-dimensional, even agricultural - Cesc Fàbregas once told him after a 0-0 draw with Arsenal, "That wasn't Barcelona football" - Hughes is a man all too familiar with the aesthetics of the game. He, like Fàbregas, played at Barcelona, even if he proved a disappointment in his one season under Terry Venables and was loaned out to Bayern Munich in 1986. Hughes" failure at the Nou Camp (relative in terms of the rest of his career) might be defined as his inability to adapt to the brand of elegant football required. The Catalan supporters swiftly branded him "El Toro" (The Bull), prefiguring the same accusation that has stalked him throughout his management career, that he prizes physicality above skill. But it is a misconception. Hughes blames himself for his deficiencies with the blaugrana, claiming "I had a fantastic opportunity and I didn't take it." Plus, ever since he took to the technical area, he has been forensic in analysing every facet of his players" talents. Hughes takes pride from his conviction that, at Blackburn, he produced the fittest team in the country. As his former striker Jason Roberts told QPR players when the manager took over: "Mark and his assistants make big demands of them. The good news is that within three or four weeks, they will never have felt as fit. Ryan Nelsen, his long-serving centre-back, also attests to his prodigious work ethic. "He's first in, last-out," the New Zealander says. The season here at QPR has been frustrating for me, so I can't imagine what it is like for him. It is horrible. If we make a mistake, it is always the manager who takes full responsibility. Hughes, by his own admission, demands standards that are "quite high," but this disciplinarian habit is reinforced by a deep understanding of science. If you have ever marvelled at Morten Gamst Pedersen's free-kicks for Blackburn, you might be intrigued to learn that they owe much to the Hughes-inspired method of "neuro-linguistic programming." This technique, essentially a process of repeated visualisation, had been embraced by Tiger Woods and Jonny Wilkinson and led to an instant improvement in the Norwegian's accuracy. The manager is understood to have acquired this intellectual curiosity during his eight years with Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, realising that he needed to stay open to fresh concepts, even from other sports, to remain competitive. But Hughes went further, incorporating the diet and dehydration tests that he saw during his loan period at Bayern Munich, and ensuring that GPS devices were sewn into his players" vests so that he could track their every move. These were no crazed acts of control-freakery; Hughes was ahead of the curve, as shown when Ferguson eventually poached his main ProZone analyst from Blackburn. Despite QPR's perilous league position, Hughes" team are not averse to playing in a cultured style. The acquisition of such flair players as Esteban Granero and Junior Hoilett underlines this, belying assumptions that Hughes will always opt for the 4-4-2, high-intensity, "up-and-at-"em" approach. "I am very confident, knowing Mark as the extreme professional, that he can improve QPR," Horne asserts. Nelsen, a stalwart of Hughes" since their Blackburn days, agrees: "All I can tell the fans is that the manager is doing everything he can to win these games." The great conundrum is whether Hughes the leader can yet realise his undoubted potential or whether, before his 50th birthday, this enigmatic soul has already hit his ceiling.