Olive branches all round

One thing we hope Adam Pearson has told his manager this week in their meetings of re-acquaintance is that he has to end his spats with various members of the first team squad.

City are understrength and playing poorly, and at least one (and maybe as many as three) of the fit and able footballers currently taking no part in matches because of a disagreement with Phil Brown could yet make a difference.

Bygones have to be bygones. It'll give us a genuine measure of Brown's stubbornness and sense of his own self-worth if he goes into his personal win or bust game with the dreaded Stoke City this weekend still insisting he was right to isolate players who dared to argue with him.

The one who absolutely could make a difference is Daniel Cousin, a centre forward who can both bruise opposing defenders and score proper goals. He carries an eternally unfair image of laziness but does know where the goal is and, more pertinently, knows where natural providers are aiming to place the ball and is willing and ready to aim directly for that area. He has an instinct and real ability and the longtime row with Brown which has prevented him playing a real part in the Premier League season needs to end instantly. It was noted by many that when he came on, surprisingly, at Liverpool when the game was long gone, that he won everything in the air and utilised his strength when given possession with his back to goal.

Who else? Well, George Boateng is also out in the cold and deserving of an opportunity to get warm again, not least because the player currently occupying the holding midfield position, Seyi Olofinjana, is chronically out of form. Boateng is believed to be the player Brown most referred to when the manager publicly complained of senior players not doing what was required of them, and we haven't seen him for a while. Having recently turned down a loan move to the Championship, the experienced Dutchman evidently feels he has some Premier League life left in him, and even if his current fitness issues mean he only plays every other game, he has still to be regarded as a proper asset. If nothing else, he is a far better leader than anyone out there right now.

Then there's Craig Fagan. This is a harder one to call, as Fagan is easily the most frustrating and divisive figure in the squad. Sometimes he is awesome, a grafting, chasing, persistent irritant down the flanks who gives no defender a moment's peace. More often, however, he is a peripheral figure, rarely able to get the ball under any control and distribute it in a positive manner while committing pointless offences and getting in trouble with referees and opponents. He has not been seen since his appalling brainstorm at Sunderland, when his early handball gave away a penalty and his later substitution began the row which smoulders to this day. Fagan deserved to be punished but maybe it has gone too far and at least the bench should be offered as a proper option. Still wouldn't pick him on pure ability for the right flank, not when the more gifted Kamel Ghilas (quicker, more disciplined) and Richard Garcia (better control and far better crosses) are around, but fire burns in Fagan's belly for the club that doesn't affect the digestive system of most others, and for that he needs to be hovering around the squad.

Of course, recruitment of any or all of these three players doesn't guarantee anything, and that includes their own professionalism. They may want Brown out and could see their selection as a direct, if deeply undesirable and eminently dishonest, way to get their wish. For the sake of every supporter who pays real money to watch the team each week, you'd hope that they'd never consider this. But Brown needs to take any kind of risk open to him. Caution on this occasion could be his last act as City boss.

Brown can't please everyone, but he can appease everyone now. He may have no choice. Pride and politics have always played a part in his assembly of squads and teams but right now he can see the clock ticking on his career at the KC Stadium and, with a job he intends to keep very much at stake this weekend, there simply isn't room for principle ahead of survival - his own survival, that is. Whatever happens against Stoke and immediately afterwards, there is plenty of time for City to stay up. This weekend is more about Brown than ever before, which is how he seems to like it, and so in order to give himself the best chance to have more such weekends, he needs to rebuild some very crumbled bridges. Even if he doesn't believe this, it's pretty certain his chairman will, and will tell him so.