The film rights to Bournemouth’s rise from oblivion may make someone a pretty penny one day but some of the case studies within it are equally compelling, and few routes to the top have been as circuitous as that undertaken by Marc Pugh.
“Lots of players have started off in the Premier League and had it handed to them on a plate,” says the Bournemouth left-winger. “Us nobodies have had to work our way up the ladder.”
It can be overlooked that a club now capable of spending £8m on a Championship left-back have had their progress underpinned by a far more cheaply assembled core who travelled through the lower divisions. Pugh, an elegant player, was released by Burnley in 2006 with his first-team experience having been confined to two loans with Kidderminster Harriers and was obliged to begin a journey that saw him flirt with the abyss more than once.
“I went on trial at Bury to prove my worth and they gave me a year’s contract,” Pugh says. “A year later I moved to Shrewsbury on a three-year contract but there was a change of manager [Paul Simpson replacing Gary Peters] and my face didn’t fit. Then I moved on to Hereford; I was 23 and thought I needed to knuckle down and get on the football ladder now, because this could be my last opportunity.
“Luckily I had a great season, and scored three goals against Bournemouth that year. They took a liking to me and I could not have imagined it would have gone so well. They gave me a chance to prove myself as a footballer and hopefully I’ve proved a lot of people wrong.”
Pugh, now 28, knows how to pick them. At Bury, he finished three points clear of relegation to the Conference; in 2008-09, he was loaned for a month from Shrewsbury to a Luton Town side who would finish bottom of the Football League; the next season, his 13 goals helped stabilize Hereford in League Two but the club continued a downward spiral that resulted in their demise last year. Bournemouth had just been promoted to League One when Pugh joined in June 2010 but they had completed their implausible escape from insolvency and near-certain demotion only a year previously and there were no guarantees that the long term would bring riches.
But the trajectory was now mapped. Pugh was outstanding in a run to the play-offs in his first season and after a more moderate 2011-12 for the club, was linked with a move to the Championship. It was the return of Eddie Howe, who had signed him before moving to Burnley six months later, that fixed his mindon staying and he has high praise for the man he believes turned his career around.
“It’s not just about the team the manager picks on a Saturday, it’s during the week,” Pugh says. “He’s the last person off the training ground, the last to leave the club. He will stay behind as long as he can to improve you as a player and puts in a tireless amount of unseen work. When we finish, he goes off to watch games to try to improve his own managerial qualities.
“Every manager has to have a ruthless streak and he knows how to manage his players. Some need an arm around them, others need a rollocking, and he strikes that fine balance.”
It took 26 seconds for Pugh to score at Huddersfield in the first match of last season, a 4-0 win, and the tone of Bournemouth’s run to the title had been set. Pugh – all twists, check-backs and intuitive link-ups with the left-back Charlie Daniels – was outstanding throughout but, with Christian Atsu and Max Gradel to add competition on the flanks, he is aware of the need to prove himself again. “In the past few seasons we have always brought in players,” he says. “The people who have come have proven their worth. I’ve played 30 to 40 games for the last four or five years, and hopefully I can do that again. We might bring in a few more bodies but I’ve got to show confidence and belief that I can do the job as well as, if not better than, other people.”
Pugh should start against Aston Villa on Saturday. The last five years have inculcated the Howe method of intricate movement on and off the ball, something that gives him a head start over any newcomers. Neither he nor his team will yield in attempting to stay up on their own terms.
“We won’t change for anyone,” he says. “It will stand us in good stead if we can get our pressing game and fluid style of football going. You can’t go into a game being fearful. We’re playing in big stadiums and you can’t go hiding because you’ll get found out. If we want to be up there for four, five, six years we have to play good football. We’ve nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
Marc Pugh was speaking at the launch of Vitality Stadium, Bournemouth’s newly named home ground
