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It is early in the season for crisis talk, but with his chairman under threat of extradition to face a corruption trial in Thailand and after an embarrassing Uefa Cup defeat, Mark Hughes knows that a loss for Manchester City at Villa Park tomorrow would heighten the unease among the club's supporters. The manager knows, too, that he needs time to impose his uncompromising style on a squad who grew used to an easy life under Sven-Göran Eriksson, his predecessor.

Hughes had spoken of his effort to impose “strict guidelines” in terms of discipline around the training ground, but after a 1-0 defeat by FC Midtjylland in a Uefa Cup qualifying match on Thursday, he talked of the need for City's players to shape up, in a physical sense, suggesting that the squad he inherited from Eriksson was lacking the fitness he had expected of a top-half Barclays Premier League team.

“We are trying to get a group of players up to match fitness and that was evident the other night in the Uefa Cup,” Hughes said. “It will not happen overnight. Maybe we will have to wait because our training is different from what they have been doing. It is about making players able to cope with the demands of the Premier League. To compete in the Premier League you have to be athletic, dynamic and sustain that performance from the first game to the last.

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“It's about doing training at the right time and with the right intensity of work. We have made a lot of changes in a short space of time and I suppose it has been a shock for some of the players.”

Hughes is more likely to have been shocked by the circumstances surrounding the club's chairman and owner, Thaksin Shinawatra, who refused to travel to Bangkok this week to face corruption charges dating back to his time as Prime Minister of Thailand, and by the club's financial position, which is nothing like as healthy as was first advertised. Hughes said: “I came into the job with my eyes wide open, but I'm delighted to be here. This is a huge club and it needs to be competing at the top of the Premier League, but that will take time.”