Slowly, it seems that some people's patience with Phil Brown is starting to wear thin.
The manner of Saturday's defeat at Sunderland, coupled with the negativity of the team selection that went into it, has broken a few camel backs and now questions are being asked about his suitability to stay in the role of Hull City manager.
There is no doubt at all that only the special circumstances of Hull City's very recent history has prevented Brown from being chopped long ago. In the calendar year of 2009, the Tigers have played 23 League games and won just two, losing a further 15 and drawing six. That totals 12 points from a possible 69. It's diabolical form.
But there really are special circumstances, the most basic and obvious one being that Hull City are still very new to all this malarkey in the top flight. Just as being an unknown quantity offered us some of the greatest footballing occasions the Tiger Nation will ever see in the early part of last season - it really won't get better than coming from a goal down to beat Arsenal away from home, you know - the inability to adapt and maintain that level of surprise was the main reason why the club got found out and ended up a whisker away from being relegated.
And that's the next special circumstance, really. The Tigers were not relegated, despite a blithe but expected claim from every highly opinionated football watcher that City wouldn't survive their first season in the highest tier. That we weren't was as much down to the sheer awfulness of other teams below the Tigers, but the League table still showed City as a survivor while dooming three others to the drop.
But now City have four points from the opening five games of their second Premier League campaign and while the performance at Chelsea suggested real talent exists in the squad and the win over Bolton (a team that looks even worse) put the KC Stadium hoodoo to bed after a long period of insomnia, there are too many issues with the squad for which the manager must take responsibility.
We could ask what are now the normal questions about Michael Turner, but it seems unlikely that impersonating a broken record won't allow any satisfactory answers to be forthcoming as it seems more and more obvious that the deal wasn't about football, but about company accounts, and it is the chairman who has taken it upon himself to offer explanations, albeit half-hearted and angry ones, for Turner's sale. Therefore, even though Brown's few comments on the deal have been to claim he backed it a hundred per cent, it seems less likely that he had much real say in the matter. The same can't be said for the departure of Sam Ricketts, a fine full back who had contractual and personal issues which, in the absence of any other explanation, seem to have stemmed from a disagreement between the player and his manager.
Brown has, furthermore, infuriated and confused people with his selections further up the field. For example, just how long does it take an enthusiastic teenaged American with fire in his belly to recover from jet lag before he is deemed ready to start a Premier League game? Astonishingly, we've still yet to see Jozy Altidore in a Premier League starting XI, despite his being apparently our best hope for a consistent goalscorer at this level. That he didn't start at Sunderland due to alleged jet lag was disappointing enough; that the player who did start was the perenially frustrating Craig Fagan made the whole thing even worse.
Maybe it's adequate enough to restrict Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink to the bench after joining; after all, he had barely met many of his new team-mates until the day before the Sunderland game as he had signed in the previous seven days when a good chunk were away with their countries. But if match fitness is the main issue here, with both Vennegoor of Hesselink and Altidore, then why not start games with them and later withdraw them for fresher legs if things either don't work out or, conversely, work out well enough to allow them the rest they need? Why make these new boys come on with the expectation of rescuing a situation on their shoulders when they are plainly not up to such pressures so early in their Hull City careers?
A safety-first policy through using the devils you know is acceptable when the players are good enough. Unfortunately, Fagan simply isn't so. He was a star in League One and a chippy but useful presence in the Championship. But in the Premier League, he is generally of little use at all, albeit with a (far too) sporadic habit of making a defender work harder than he's ever worked before. Brown's selection of him at Sunderland was a horrendous mistake, a team selection gaffe on a par with choosing Danny Coles over Turner on two notorious occasions in the Championship which directly led to 1-5 and 2-3 home reversals. Fagan gave away the softest, most imbecilic penalty possible to giftwrap Sunderland's early lead and was an ill-disciplined, directionless, touchless mess for the rest of the match. Meanwhile, there's a hungry, eager, youthful American lad with wide-eyed keenness to do well shuffling about on the bench, aching for the chance to show what he can do.
There are also other issues surrounding Brown's team selections, especially the current indulgence of Kevin Kilbane as a central midfielder even though, despite a couple of mildly impressive performances in that role last season, the ageing Irishman is evidently not suited. Ian Ashbee is sorely missed as the central enforcer (not to mention as the captain) but one has to ask why, in the talisman's absence, George Boateng isn't starting games any more when he played so superbly at Chelsea and adds an extra leadership quality that nobody in today's squad can equal.
Kilbane was a signing whose experience is all very well but he seems unable to make it form part of the recipe required for being able to do the right things with the ball on the right occasions. Beyond his individual errors, he does seem to allow many games to pass him by totally - it's been noted that in the match report on this blog for the Sunderland, game he isn't mentioned once, positively or negatively.
If he is going to play, then left back seems to be the role where - and this is a sad thing to say about a footballer of previous good standards - he is the least likely to cause any damage to his own side. How awful to feel the need to describe a player not by how good he is in certain positions than others, but how less bad he is in those positions compared to others. And yet even then, nobody would consider Kilbane a better left back option than Andy Dawson, and quite rightly so. And this is even despite Kilbane's status as the first-choice left back for his country.
It's a fair point to suggest that had Anthony Gardner and Jimmy Bullard been available for even three quarters of the games that have taken place since each joined the club then the predicament wouldn't be so bad, but this is an argument based predominantly on reputation and guesswork, and can't be backed up with facts. And for all the joy that comes with signing such big-name players, the truth is that both had abominable injury records prior to joining the Tigers and maybe consideration should have been given to that before ticking their medical boxes and shaking hands.
There is also a strong school of thought that says that Brown has, in three seasons (as good as) with the club, he has achieved something thought impossible prior to it happening. First, he saved a stranded club from near-certain relegation from the Championship. Secondly, he got the same deeply unfashionable club into the top flight (and via a glory-filled method). Thirdly, he kept this weight-punching club in that top flight when all and sundry laughed and hooted at the very thought of the Tigers managing anything but an instant, ignominious return to a lower echelon. For these achievements, Brown got our thanks and still deserves them, but only in addition to criticism, not as a vaccine against it. His past exceptional record is mitigation, not a defence.
Footballers and football managers are always saying that the past doesn't matter. We can't change results, we can't rely on past glories, and all that. Sadly, we are struggling to see any future glories right now, so exactly what ambition should the club have, and what are we, as supporters, entitled to expect?
Transparency is one. We've had too many run-ins with the club's authorities over the darker years to need another face-off, especially when the club is in the top flight and not fighting off winding-up orders while considering life in the Conference. Yet the lack of protest by Brown over the selling of the single most influential player in the squad, the chap who did more than most of the squad put together to aid our progress from Championship to Premier League and then stay there, is deafening. Many managers have shouted the odds and even resigned over a suited chap's decision to decimate the first team squad in some way thanks to the lure of filthy lucre. Or even clean lucre.
The relationship between Brown and his chairman has always looked too close, too pally. A good chairman won't ever be best mates with his manager as one day he may have to sack him. It could be a smart tactic by Brown, whose fingers were burnt badly by some real cretins at Derby, to make himself unsackable through his natural charm, but it doesn't do the credibility of the club any good if the team continues to misfire, he stays in his role and his chairman continues to promote his virtues and say nothing is wrong.
There is still lots of time for Brown, despite an abysmal record in 2009 as manager and any number of issues with the team and the behind-the-scenes politics, as he does have those special circumstances that go with being in the unlikely position of managing Hull City into the Premier League and then, just as impressively, keeping them there. But ultimately, football is, if the soundbites are to be believed, a results business and again we can point to two meagre victories in 23 Premier League games since New Year's Day.
This blog likes the manager of Hull City very much. His place in the club's history is more than secure and whatever else occurs in his career, he will be remembered in football as the guy who took a club prone to ridicule and self-destruction into the wealth and showbiz of Premier League football. For that, he will be a club legend long after he and the rest of us are daisy-pushing.
But right now? Well, he still deserves to be the manager of the club, but he really has to re-think how he goes about it. He has become negative, a sourpuss, a man open to too much ridicule whom opposing fans actively despise and whose personality seems, according to hearsay, to have actively put off new players from joining up.
This time last season, his team was vibrant and positive and the world stopped to watch, allowing him to take a spot of deserved glory and a Manager of the Month award while his sublime 4-3-3 formation beat Arsenal, out-fought Tottenham Hotspur, frightened Liverpool to death and scored three goals away at Manchester United. But now, he is a shadow of that exciting and excited figure who leapt ten feet in the air each time his side thwarted a superpower of the game and was asked for his secret by confused but enchanted journalists.
Look at him now. Cautious, weak, grumpy. This isn't our manager. We need him back and he needs to come back, because even though his chairman is his pal, the statistics cannot be kept behind the curtain for much longer before they finally become the factor that they would be for any other manager in the game. It's time for Phil Brown to start afresh and show us again just how bloody good he is.
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