Man Utd U21s Assistant named Newport County Manager

“You build relationships with people and that makes decisions like this challenging. But after speaking to the chairman on a few occasions, it became a straightforward decision in terms of the challenge ahead and the shared vision for the club.”

He has joined Newport on a two-year contract and will be joined by Wayne Hatswell as Assistant and Lee Kendall as Head of Goalkeeping.  

Hughes came through the youth ranks at Aston Villa and made seven first-team appearances for the club before retiring because of injury at the age of 26.

He went on to become Head of Youth at Shrewsbury Town (2009 to 2011), a coach at Watford’s Academy (2011 to 2014) and Wales Intermediate Teams Assistant (2014 to 2016), before returning to Villa in November 2016 as their U18s Lead.

Hughes has also been Head of Player Development at Southampton and was both Head of Academy Coaching and Academy Manager at Cardiff. 

Earlier this month we revealed that United’s U18s Lead, Adam Lawrence, would be leaving at the end of this season to “seek a new challenge elsewhere in the game.”