Phil Brown has been cracking up for several months.
The pressure is too much for him. It’s not easy being a manager. Who else does their job in front of 55,000 people and fifteen TV cameras? Who else is forced to discuss a day’s work with shameless hacks who only want controversy, sensation and trivia?
I don’t think Phil Brown is a northern bully boy like his old boss Sam Allardyce.
Brown is a very good coach whose tactics were perfect when Hull beat Arsenal 2-1 at the Emirates on Saturday September 27. He controlled that game from the technical area, and the players kept looking over for his signals.
On November 10, after Hull hosted his old club Bolton at the KC Stadium he wrote a piece in The Daily Telegraph headlined : How can you criticise Arsenal’s Arsene Wenger?
He said that, after gave 15 years of service at Bolton, it was surreal to play this game. He thought they Hull deserved something from the game but keeper Jussi Jaaskelainen prevented that.
He wrote this : That was our third Premier League defeat on the bounce, but it is not a cause for too much concern. There have been some high expectations after the start we had, especially with our victory over Arsenal at the Emirates, but defeats to Chelsea and Manchester United are no cause for shame. That win over Arsenal has proved that we are capable of playing in this division, although we have to realise that we were perhaps fortunate not to have come up against the Arsenal that defeated United on Saturday.
I have been fascinated by the criticism that has been levelled at Arsene Wenger over the last few days, and I think that result should silence his detractors to some extent. Arsene has put his credentials and his credibility on the block with those comments last week after the Stoke game, but nobody in the game of football, certainly not at my level, can criticise him for what he has done for Arsenal over the past 10 years. He is a model for any young coach, manager or chairman who want to achieve.
Arsene took over from Bruce Rioch, who was my manager at Bolton Wanderers. Bruce used to say that Arsenal would be the only club that he would have considered leaving Bolton for, because of Arsenal’s stature. It is steeped in tradition. Not only has Arsene got a hold of that football club and taken them to a new stadium and a new training ground, he has taken the style of football from a 1-0, back-four mentality to massive levels of entertainment, and I have nothing but admiration for him.
When I first came into coaching 10 years ago I had the good fortune to sit down with him to talk about management. At the time he was living in Hertfordshire, in a hotel which became a focal point for him and his initial plans. We spent an hour or two talking about his philosophy of the game, and it was, frankly, inspiring. There was a young foreign manager coming in, driven by a vision that he had for Arsenal. Now all of a sudden he has gone past his vision. The fans are now expecting the side to win titles year-in year-out, but he has a grander dream – such as playing entertaining football and cultivating youth.
But that said, his philosophy has got to be Premier League and Champions League-driven. That is the frustrating thing for him. Wenger’s work will not be done until he has won the title again, and more to the point, until he has won the Champions League.
There are Arsenal fans out there who are not happy with Wenger, I know, and I would love to sit down with those guys and ask the reason why. As far as I am concerned, he should be a template for any young coach or manager. Any one wanting to get started in the game, should study Arsene Wenger. “
Seven weeks after writing that, on Friday, December 26 , Phil Brown was so disgusted with his team’s first-half performance at Manchester City, where they lost 5-1, that he made his players sit in front of the Hull supporters on the pitch at half-time while he berated them.
On March , after Hull 1 Blackburn 2, a game in which Brown took Geovanni and Kilbane off, he talked about Geovanni and said : “He’s having a drugs test at the moment and with any luck he’ll fail it.”
You don’t say that about a player. Brown was cracking up.
Then on Tuesday night, March 17, Brown behaved despicably at the Emirates when Gallas scored a controversial late winner to put Hull out of the FA Cup.
Every pundit and fan in England has had their say on this topic over the last three days but I was bored by it.
Friends said I should I should write something but I said, “I don’t want to sit in a sewer and add to it.” That was a line from a literary spat in the eighteenth century, when two English essayists or poets had a difference of opinion, insults flew, and it became a huge controversy.( I Googled the remark but failed to find it.)
What do I think about the spitting/ Phil Brown eruption?
I think I would prefer not to write about it. I would be happy to wait for it to go away. If I have to comment, I’d say four things only.
(1) Hull assistant manager Brian Horton was shouting obscenities at Wenger throughout the first half and the fourth official did nothing .
(2) That video shows Fabregas leaning down to SHOUT AT Michael Ballack, not spit on him. That was in the 91st minute of a game against Bayern Munich on 9/3/2005 when Arsenal had lost 3-1 away and were winning 1-0 at home. Cesc was 17.
(3) I think Phil Brown needs medical treatment. I feel very sorry for him. He is not well and needs time off to re-charge his batteries and regain contact with reality. It’s is a very, very, very stressful job and it’s tragic to see managers become ill.
(4) It’s horrible to see the way damaged men like Phil Brown are baited and tortured by rabid, slavering tabloid hacks, who have an agenda that is thoroughly disgusting and reprehensible. UK sports journalism has gone. It has completely gone and will never come back. It’s finished. It’s dumb, stupid and ugly. A minority of good men tried to keep football journalism alive but they failed. RIP.