Continuing with my current love affair with the Hull City Tigers, I looked for some info on their current manager, Phil Brown. Gotta say that this guy intrigues me: he’s personable, loves his club, and quite animated on the touchline like Jose Mourhino is. Phil’s also kinda stylish like the Special One, too: he’s Target to Jose’s Armani though.
My research shows that the man has every right to hold a managerial job: 18 years of playing on the pitch for four clubs (including Bolton and Blackpool), was a caretaker for Bolton, and a full-on manager for Derby County. Only at Derby for seven months but don’t hold that against him: DC will continue to rotate managers until it finds one that can accomplish the difficult task of whipping the squad into shape. Phil just happened to be in the rotation.
But enough of the past, let’s move on to the present. He took Hull City to the top during the Championship League promotion playoffs, earning them a slot in the EPL. Since joining the top flight, the Tigers have played six games and have lost only one, but man did they lose that game! 0-5 against Wigan. Past that, they’ve won or drawn five games that many (including me) thought that they would lose, especially the 2-1 pimpslap they put on Arsenal this past weekend. Yes, performances by HC players Boaz Myhill, Daniel Cousin, and Geovanni led to victory (how about that Geovanni strike?!?!?!?!) but tactical moves by Phil Brown paved the way for those performances. ‘Nuff said.
Now let’s just hope that Phil keeps both his squad and himself from becoming cocky because if anything can do them in, it’s that. My hope is that they continue to go out and play the best game that they can, with goal of remaining in the Premier League at the end of the year. If they do that then I believe that the team will will develop into more of cohesive unit and they’ll get some more TV rights money which will allow them to grab one or two key players, possibly from La Liga. I’ll repeat my very risky prediction and say that they’ll grab the fifth spot in the EPL next year, hereby securing a UEFA Cup slot (Cup, NOT Championship). But I’ll add to this risky prediction that none of this will happen if Phil Brown leaves the club. He’s the straw that’s stirring the drink right now.
As stated, the main purpose of this blog is for me to learn about footie and the biggest lesson that I’ve learned so far is that every season is full of surprises. The last season is different from the next and the Phil Brown-led Tiger’s current performance has done the most to drive this point home to me. I seriously believed that Tottenham Hotspur had the best chance to break the EPL’s top four, while the Tigers were simply on a little vacation from the C’Ship League (Along with West Brom and Stoke) and would go back there next year. Now the current sixth-place Hull is set to square off against the current last place Spurs this weekend in an already sold out match where Hull is the away team but is still the odds-on favorite. Throw this surprise in with less-than-stellar performances by Man U, Real Madrid, AC Milan, and Inter, and very little has happened as I predicted it would this season…so far.
I need to close by referring back to what this post is about: my love affair with Phil Brown and Hull City. “Love affair” is the active phrase here because Hull City is my mistress while Chelsea is my wife. I am geeked that my Blues are currently number one and will be fully rooting for them when the play Hull on October 29th this year and February 7th in 2009. But I will be watching every Hull City game I can and root for them full on.