Hughes wants to silence 'noise' around his Southampton future

Mark Hughes plans to silence the "noise" around his future as Southampton provide Claudio Ranieri's first opposition as Fulham manager.

Hughes finds himself the favourite to be the next Premier League boss sacked after bottom-placed Fulham changed managers during the international break by replacing Slavisa Jokanovic with Ranieri.

Southampton are only outside the relegation zone on goal difference and have gone eight games without a league win.

But Saints boss Hughes shrugged off talk of his future before the crunch trip to Craven Cottage by saying: "There will always be speculation and I call it noise.

"Once a manager departs after a lot of noise that noise switches to someone else and all the negative stats come out.

"A little bit of the noise is around me at the moment which is the nature of the role that I have. It will go away with a few good results.

"It becomes a little bit predictable and you understand how it works.

"After 20 years doing this job, it's nothing I haven't seen and dealt with before. It's part of the job and doesn't faze me."