Just as his hallowed, worshipped name seemed to have escaped the summer speculation, Michael Turner's future at Hull City has become slightly precarious.
Phil Brown has revealed in one of his press briefings that he has had a couple of inquiries about Turner. These have been turned down, flat. Well, that's certainly good. And it's not good, but also unpreventable, that other clubs have got their beady eye on our prized defender. What isn't good and was unpreventable was Brown making this issue public.
Why has he done this? He can't surely need or prefer the money to such an accomplished central defender. Given the lack of summer acquisitions, despite bids of magnitude going in left, right and centre, the budget allocated by the chairman remains intact. So even though one would hope for an eight-figure fee in exchange for the great man if and when he does depart our patch, it's not as if the money is vital. There is money in the bank and a stack of it burns a hole in Brown's pocket. There's no point in adding to it if you're struggling to use it.
So why else could he have done it? Well, maybe he has one eye on Manchester City's situation and is taking the risk of slightly unsettling Turner in the hope that Mark Hughes may see him as the central defender his gargantuan plan requires but can't get. Thanks to a swathe of fresh purchases, Hughes suddenly has ten centre forwards and City need at least two, probably three. Hughes wants Joleon Lescott but can't get him, so maybe Brown is teasing Hughes with Turner in the hope of getting a couple of decent strikers to travel the opposite way, with still a few quids thrown in on top. And maybe Richard Dunne, too. But this ambitious intention could backfire spectacularly. All Manchester City would need to do is declare their lack of interest in Turner and Brown ends up with no new signings and a deeply browned off centre back requiring an explanation.
Brown is media-friendly, but one hopes he learned from some of his outbursts and moments of preening last season which saw our club nosedive in neutral popularity. By the end of the season, people wanted the Tigers relegated just to get shut of Brown from the top division. Two wins in 29 games suggests that City survived despite Brown, not because of him. While it remains a crazy idea to consider replacing him - he got us up, and then we stayed there, come on! - one key lesson we needed to learn from a turbulent opening year was that it was never about the manager as much as the manager eventually seemed to think. Yet the manager has now made more headlines out of giving the media something to gnaw on, potentially upsetting his star asset in the process.
If Turner, as unassuming and likeable a personality as City has ever had, on top of being our finest ever defender, gets his back put up by Brown's cosy words, then City fans will be apoplectic.
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