In Defence of Phil Brown

I recently read an article entitled "Phil Brown Is The Worst Kind Of Manager", and although it was very well written and also well argued, I disagree with certain aspects of the article.

The article focused on the now infamous half time on pitch team talk in the middle of the disastrous Manchester City game.

Really I can't think you can blame this on Hull's awful second half of the season. I don't think that incident affected the entire season at all, it was mere coincidence at the most. Just because one thing happened and then another thing happened doesn't mean one caused the other.

First of all I do think it was justified for the simple reason that Hull had a shocking first half. They didn't get into the game, they didn't try, they didn't defend, pass, attack or do anything. It was a genuinely pathetic performance.

What Brown did was emphasise just how important good Premier League performances are, not just to him but to the Hull City faithful who had just sat through 45 minutes of complete rubbish.

To suggest that that single event is responsible for a half a season of bad results is ridiculous, I'm sure most of the players knew that their performance wasn't the best they could have played. The article I mentioned in the beginning suggest that the players didn't play for the manager for the rest of the season.

This doesn't hold up for two reasons.

Firstly (as previously mentioned) the players knew they put in a terrible performance as a team and they probably deserved the public dressing down. But also they would know that they weren't just playing for the manager but playing for the Hull fans who put in so much passion into their club.

If Hull fans had booed the team during the talk then the team could feel disgruntled towards them. But instead the players knew that they still had the confidence of the fans and that they were playing for them just as much as they were for the manager.

People have said would Ferguson have done it? Or Benitez? Or Wenger? The answer is no. But then Phil Brown is just a different kind of manager to these great managers. He displays a public passion for his team, but this can also spill over into the scene we all witnessed at half time away to Manchester City.

A final point. Phil Brown in recent months has come across as arrogant and full of himself in the press. Apart from the fact that the press can make a person look bad from the most innocent of quotes is obvious. what some people seem to be missing is Brown's inexperience to managing a Premier League club.

He was unused to the media glare that goes with the job and made mistakes which got overblown. All I'm saying is that people should give him a break; old pros like Wenger might be able to say "I didn't see it" to every incident but a relatively inexperience Brown cannot keep his emotions in check.

People might say that he had experience when he was Sam Alladyce's right-hand man at Bolton, but the media's attention is never on the assistant, only the man in charge.

As to the sing at the end of the Manchester United home game all I can say to that is the man had just kept Hull City in the Premier League and i think he was entitled to enjoy himself a little. The true stars are the players to be sure but without a manager they would have no direction, no vision.

They probably were glad to have a cool down in the changing rooms and let's be honest - Brown didn't not let them out at all. They had their moment as well.