One came Hughes' way from Manchester City's billionaire owner Sheikh Mansour following his trip to Abu Dhabi in November. Another arrived from City chief executive Garry Cook shortly after City had been humiliated 3-0 at home by Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup.

Cook said: "Mark is part of building the club, from the playing side right through to making this a great place for employees.

"Mark's plans and the way he is running the team are going to build and the confidence will start to build."

Fine words and positive thoughts, but sooner rather than later if the dreaded vote of confidence is not to take its customary course Hughes needs to come up with evidence that he is not just a hod-carrier of a manager, one adept at the donkey work required at clubs with limited resources.

He needs to prove he is a footballing architect with genuine vision, with a gift for spending money, lots of it, wisely.

So far at City Hughes has seen the career of Micah Richards, a player tipped to be an England regular, implode before his eyes.

The word is he has become distanced from players such as Michael Ball, Elano, Jo and Dietmar Hamann. Trust and respect between some senior players and the management team at Eastlands appears to have evaporated.

In normal circumstances when that happens with the club languishing around the relegation zone it is the manager who goes, if only because it is easier to replace one man than a bunch of expensive players.

The signs so far, however, are that City will not take that pragmatic route.

Instead they look likely to hand Hughes footballing commodities which seldom inhabit a managerial office at the same time these days. Time. Patience. And money.

Already he has bought Wayne Bridge for around £10million. Over the odds for a Chelsea reserve perhaps, but in Bridge he has a dependable defender who has proved his versatility at international level.

He has been linked with West Ham's Scott Parker, Blackburn's Roque Santa Cruz and Arsenal's Kolo Toure.

Not the type of players Sheikh Mansour had in mind when he splashed out £32million on Robinho at the start of the season.

But the top Champions League players are not available in January and the job of Hughes now is to guarantee Premier League survival and give City a stable platform from which they can take off next season as the richest football club in the world.

The bottom line, however, is that if the January buys do not succeed then, survive or not, Hughes can hardly expect the owners to allow him to dip into their well of funds again come the summer.

Thus the mad January transfer window, in which a striker such as Portsmouth's Jermain Defoe looks set to return to Spurs for considerably more than they sold him for just last January, is really a final audition for Hughes.

I hope he passes it. Two main reasons.

One is because City's supporters have watched the club stagger from one crisis to the next for more than 30 years and yet remain among the most loyal and patient fans in the whole of football.

The other is that Hughes carries the hopes and the reputation of young British Premier League managers on his shoulders.

Tony Adams is struggling through his embryonic months at Portsmouth and Gareth Southgate is treading water at Middlesbrough, while the idea of youth took a hammering with Roy Keane's demise at Sunderland and the sacking of Paul Ince at Blackburn.

The pressure on Hughes is intense, especially when potential managerial successors include Jose Mourinho.

Yet if Hughes fails then what chance is there of billionaire owners entrusting England's top clubs in the future to British football men making their way in management? Nil and less than nil.

That, most of all, is why I hope City's confidence in Hughes is not misplaced.