Insecurities cost Phil Brown dear at Hull

Despite all the success Phil Brown and Hull City have had over the past two years it has been riddled with a strong sense of insecurity which cost Phil Brown his job and has Hull staring financial ruin in the face.

Hull’s rise through the leagues is a phenomenal story. A Rugby League town to the core in no one would have ever associated the city of Hull with Premiership football. The board at Hull City realized this and made it a goal of theirs to prove otherwise through their ambitious off field activities. Upon their arrival in the top flight and even  before a ball had been kicked Hull made an astonishing £7 million bid for Frazier Campbell, a player who had never scored in the Premiership and who ended up moving to Sunderland the following year for just £3.5 million. Six months later Hull paid £5 million for Jimmy Bullard and put him on £50,000 a week, ending recently with their chairman Adam revealing that their wage bill is double what it should be. One could see this as a sign of strong ambition, however the sale of star defender Michael Turner for a mere £4 million to Sunderland, shows us that the more likely scenario is that Hull have had their judgment clouded in their desperation to become accepted as an Premiership club.

Hull got their first Premiership season off to a wonderful start playing attacking football no matter where they went. Phil Brown appeared to have it right with Marlon King leading the line allowing Giovanni to make things happen just behind him, delivering some very impressive wins against the likes of Arsenal and Tottenham. The Tigers were looking more like Champions League contenders than a team that had just come up from the Championship. However, instead of continuing with this style that had served them so well Phil Brown decided to change. Gone was the free flowing football that saw them batter Liverpool for 45 minutes, gone was the lethal partnership of Giovanni and King to be replaced with a defensive 4-5-1 formation with dreaded long ball tactics. It was as if Phil Brown couldn’t believe how far he and his team and come and they seemed afraid to go any further. The result was a run of form so bad that Hull went from a third placed team in November, to a team staring relegation in the face come the final day of the season.

During Hull’s strong start to last season Phil Brown took as much limelight as the club itself. For three months Phil Brown looked the archetypal confident young manager who had served his apprenticeship coaching in the lower leagues and was clearly ready for the big time. However, as time progressed, and as Hull started getting thumped every week Brown became extremely difficult to read. A student of the Sam Allardyce school of management, Brown never seemed at peace with himself as he waltzed around the technical box wearing a Jose Mourinio coat and a Sam Allardyce headset.

However, moments after George Boateng’s sending off  against Arsenal, in  what became Brown’s final game in charge, the fancy headset came off and it was as if he knew the game was up. Phil Brown could drop the character he had putting on for the past eighteen months and finally be himself.

Brown is clearly a football coach who knows his stuff; you don’t win promotion from the Championship without substance, however his character has always been in question. At the age of 50 the man from Durham is still wearing a fake tan and appearing on Goals on Sunday with a bright pink sweater wrapped around his neck whilst wearing skin tight jeans; why would a respected Premiership manager ever feel the need to do such a thing?

However, the world got the clearest look into the real character of Phil Brown on one cold December afternoon at the City of Manchester Stadium when he chose to conduct a half time dressing down in front of millions of viewers. Hull found themselves 4-0 down after half an hour and the cracks were starting to appear in their great start to life in the Premier League. On top of that people were beginning to ask questions about their leader, and Brown knew it. Therefore in a bid to show that he was in fact in total control of his team, Brown made his players sit down in front of the Hull fans as he read the riot act. It was like a power hungry school teacher telling his pupils off for misbehaving in the playground and Brown drew criticism from anyone who knows what it takes to successfully manage a group of people.

Despite his somewhat Hollywood like appearance Phil Brown is a true football man. Before starting his coaching career he played 652 games at right back for the likes of Halifax and Hartlepool, and instead of heading to Old Trafford afterwards he started his coaching career as the assistant manager at Blackpool. Football needs people like Phil Brown much like Phil Brown needs football. Therefore next time he gets a job as a manager he should stop worrying about how suave he looks for 50 years old, and start thinking about how good he would have looked had Hull amassed 50 points this season.

Written by Kieran Lovelock