A couple of players have admitted the Toon boss tends to leave the tactics on the training pitch to others, suggesting he simply 'lets them get on with it'.
Hughton spoke yesterday of turning Newcastle into an attacking force again, after a couple of poor performances.
But the more he spoke - the more I felt he was trying to convince HIMSELF he knew what he was talking about.
Chris Hughton: “What we want to be able to do is play a good, free-flowing passing game. That’s what you want and it’s nice if you can do it.
“I know what the supporters want to see but that’s any supporters of any team, I think.
"We were delighted a couple of weeks ago that we were able to give the supporters that on the Friday against Cardiff. That is the ideal.
“Of course, what’s more important than that is winning games. We have to maintain where we are and would I have performances like that and get a draw or would I get a scrappy win? It would be a win.
“But if we can do that by playing free-flowing football then great, that is what we would like to do.
"We do have wingers in Wayne Routledge and Jonás Gutiérrez in particular that are capable of producing that. It’s very nice to see it when it happens.
“There are some games where you don’t think it will be appropriate. If you don’t it tends to be a different type of game.
“It doesn’t mean it will be any less attractive or the passing worse, just that it becomes a different game.
"If you play a Peter Løvenkrands or an Andy Carroll it is different – you have different players for different games.
“We are playing teams with the same problems and they are having to play the same players.
“It's about getting the balance between continuity and freshening things up.”