MARK Hughes has won some of the biggest prizes football has to offer.

In a glittering playing career that included spells at Manchester United, Chelsea, Bayern Munich and Barcelona, Hughes won the Premier League twice, the FA Cup four times, the League Cup twice, and the Cup Winners' Cup twice, not to mention countless individual awards such as the PFA player of the year.

But ask the Welshman what the greatest achievement of his career so far is and he will tell you it was keeping Blackburn Rovers in the Premiership last season.

When Hughes first made that statement on April 20, immediately after Rovers' 1-0 victory over Crystal Palace finally banished the spectre of relegation that had been looming over the club for the previous six months, the assembled journalists in the media theatre at Ewood Park took his comments with a pinch of salt.

Surely Hughes had just got carried away in the euphoria of the moment and he didn't really believe leading Rovers to safety was a greater personal feat than scoring the winning goal in a major European final?

Three months on, however, Hughes still stands by that emotive statement and you know from the steely look in his eyes that he means every word of it.

It was September 22 last year when the former United great got his first proper insight into the scale of the challenge that was facing him after he had agreed to succeed Graeme Souness as the Blackburn manager.

Rovers had just lost to Bournemouth on penalties in the Carling Cup and as Hughes surveyed the wreckage from his technical area, it suddenly dawned on him that he was about to embark on the biggest test of his professional career.

Blackburn were a club in turmoil thanks to the legacy left by Souness.

Team spirit was at an all-time low, confidence had hit rock bottom, and a squad that was short on quality lacked the fitness to compete in the Premiership.

All the ingredients were there for Hughes to fall flat on his face and there were some within the game who would have revelled in seeing that happen.

But Hughes is at his best when his back is against the wall.

When the chips were down, there were few players you'd rather have in a crisis than the muscular striker, whose ability to deliver the goods when the pressure was at its most intense made him a United legend.

Now the 41-year-old is showing similar qualities as a manager, having successfully made the transition from managing Wales to being a boss in the Premiership.

And Hughes takes great pride from what he achieved last season, leading Rovers to safety with five games of the campaign to spare when all had looked lost five months earlier.

"That is the greatest achievement of my career so far. Absolutely," said the Blackburn boss.

"If you look over the whole of the season and the work we felt we had to do, and how we had to go about it, I still stand by what I said.

"When we beat Palace that night, that was confirmation of all the effort the staff and the players had put in.

"I think people within the game understood what a difficult job we had come into.

"Maybe some expected me to fail and maybe some were hoping that I would because that's the nature of the business, so I knew I had to make a success of this job, otherwise I'd be viewed as damaged goods."

Hughes was hardly a novice in managerial terms when he took on the challenge of resurrecting Rovers' fortunes.

Six years as the manager of Wales had provided a steep learning curve, but there were still those who believed he wasn't prepared for the rigours of being a manager in the Premiership.

"When I came here I'd been an international manager for six years but, for whatever reason, people sometimes just dismiss that.

"I certainly didn't dismiss it, though, and I feel that was an excellent grounding for me.

"The experiences I had with the Welsh squad and how I had to approach that job, in terms of the demands and the restrictions you have, means you've got to be organised and you have to have an idea of the stance you want to take.

"I felt that was important preparation for this job and invaluable in all honesty.

"I've been able to come into this job with a very clear idea of what's right and what's wrong, and that opinion has been shaped by my experiences with Wales.

"I feel very comfortable in the job I'm doing now, I'm very clear on which direction I think we need to go in, and everyone has bought into that."

Rovers were 19th in the table, with two points from five games, when Hughes took charge in September last year and he knew strong medicine was needed if the club was to survive in the Premiership.

But things got worse before they got better as back to back 4-0 defeats against Middlesbrough and Chelsea in mid-October saw Rovers slip to the bottom of the league.

Some managers might have panicked in a similar situation, but not Hughes.

He believed the key to survival lay in the work he did with the players on the training ground and he placed the emphasis on getting the team fitter, stronger and better organised, a strategy that eventually led to them turning the corner.

"When we first came in, we felt there was a lot of work we needed to get into the players, not only in terms of their fitness but on the mental side of things too, and the way we wanted them to play," said Hughes.

"It was a big ask for the players because they had to take it all on board very, very quickly but, credit to them, they did and if they hadn't done then we possibly could have found ourselves in a situation where we were no longer in this league.

"But they turned it around. We gave them the structure and the platform to be able to do it but we couldn't go onto the pitch and win football games, which is what they did."

The turning point last season as far as Hughes is concerned was the 2-0 win at Fulham on November 27, a result which lifted the club out of the bottom three.

From then on, Rovers tightened up significantly and never lost a Premiership game by more than one goal, finally achieving their safety target with a month of the season to spare.

"I think the game at Fulham, when we went there and picked up our first away win, was a key point in the season," said Hughes, who also pointed to the signings of Ryan Nelsen and Aaron Mokoena in January as a crucial factor in Rovers' revival.

"We'd had a couple of draws and some decent performances and I think it came at the right time because we'd been playing well but just not getting the rewards.

"We just needed a good result to emphasise what we were telling the players was right.

"From that point onwards, we seemed to get stronger and more resolute."