Dem On made a good point about Brownie being a very lucky manager when we went up and the season when we really should have been relegated from the Prem and stayed up thanks to other teams, but for me the best decisions he made were getting Deano back and Campbell which gave us goals in the team. I think his best achievement for us was actually saving us from relegation in the Championship. I couldn't ever see him repeating the original success he had with us, partly because of what Dem On said is true, he did have some incredible luck, but his downfall was getting so cocky and turning into the karaoke clown that a lot of people remember him as unfortunately.
I think for me it boils down to Brownie wanted desperately to be a legend, and be worshipped. St Nick *is* a legend, but doesnt seek it.
I'm not a Brown hater or a lover but sit somewhere inbetween - he took us to heights we have never previously known but when he got there, he frankly made some embarrassing, rudimentary errors that clearly exposed his limitations. However, this point about the England manager raised a smile.... I remember being with Brown in a collective group of media when Roy Keane left Sunderland and Brown said he was flattered to be linked with the Sunderland job but it was inevitable. The collective response was one of bemusement until one hack said "Phil, we havent seen your name linked anywhere and we dont believe you're in the running". Back to earth with a bump.
Now this point really annoys me - the only reason ANY team avoids relegation in any given year is because there were 3 worse teams. Why people level this at Brown is beyond me.
Have to agree here, at the end of the day Newcastle didn't do enough to stay up, their fate was in their own hands and it was down to them whether they went down or not. We were probably lucky to stay up, but we did enough over the season to stay up. The following season we didn't do enough over the season to stay up, and like it or not TWF that is down to Brown as well!
I agree too. On the final day of the season a Man U supporting mate of mine text me to say that we were lucky to stay up. I pointed out that it was not luck that we accumulated more points over the course of the season than 3 other teams
Here we go again. Another couple of snipes at younger supporters. I've had a season pass for nine years now, and went to the majority of games for the two years prior to that. When I was 7. Ok so supporters my age weren't around for 'The Great Escape' but it's made out as though we missed it through choice, as if we only started following them when they first got promoted to the Championship. The only reason we were so delayed is because at the age of 4, I was more interested in playing choo-choo trains than watching Hull City, and for that, I apologise. But funnily enough, an 18 year old can still figure out that it's not always going to be an easy ride. 'Were you around to witness the Great Escape?' 'No, but I was too youn-' '-No, no, your opinion isn't valid, you don't know anything about Hull City.' ****. Off.
That's not quite what I'm saying. And Percy is pretty much the same age as me so the old age argument doesn't wash here. I'm not saying his opinion isn't valid because he hasn't supported the club for 10 years, I'm saying his opinion is invalid because it's not an opinion, more a senseless rant of ramblings about something he's obviously immaturely and stubbornley refusing to acknowledge or he's just a really thick twat. I believe it would be the former
But... that means that my rant was for nothing! Meh, let it be a message to anyone who shares the opinion that I thought I was addressing
I don't always agree with TWF but the basic premise in this post is right. No-one expected promotion in the early part of that year, he was just another care-taker type manager. I used to watch Parkinson standing silently in his area totally lost. PB used walk up to him and talk to him. Often changes were made later and very often things improved a bit. We started playing better bit by bit under PB in way which started me thinking, my god we are better than these lot. Never thought that in the few seasons before. By the time we got to the play-offs I "knew" we could do it. Wembley was something else and I was just praying, and praying, because it's Hull City ffs! We over-achieved with that team in the first year (and that's PB's problem now) but we stayed up by right and I was proud of the whole club. And will never forget the fantastic days we had. I worked in Manchester and was surrounded by Manu, Man City. Liverpool and some Villa fans. For once I heard my club being talked about with awe. PB got players to believe they were better than they were, that's worth some credit surely. When we got found out it was a wake up for many players, and we crashed like a zeppelin. When I look at the stats at the end of that 2nd season I still believe PB could have scraped up more points that Dowie, and maybe kept us up. The finance problems cannot be all down to the football manager in this day and age. Bartlett and Duffen held the purse strings, we seem to be the ownly club who lay any finance fiasco at the door of the football manager, why! Maybe because he made a fool of himself publicly and privately. The real flawed part of the man. He did lose the plot but under massive pressure from fans, the now hating media and as we know at least one player. The next time we get in the PL just remember how tough it was before, but enjoy it while you can, and don't slag off the man who got us there.
I don't think most people's opinions of Brownie had anything to do with him over-achieving at the start. As someone who followed the team home and away for almost every game that Brownie managed for us, it was his ridiculous team selections and even more bizarre substitutions in the last eighteen months that made me lose faith with him, far more than the results. In the promotion season he was given some cash to spend and he put together a decent team and we played decent football, everything was great. In the first Premier League season the signings were a bit more hit and miss, but he did bring in just enough quality to compete(and we certainly over-achieved at the start of that first season), but we didn't get found out, we completely changed the way we played after a couple of poor results, most notably after the Sunderland game. Our first season really turned on the loss of the King/Cousin partnership and the switch to 4-5-1, often using ***an or Garcia as the loan striker, while leaving the likes of Geovanni and Cousin on the bench. Brownie was in my view, the architect of his own downfall, his stubborn refusal to play his best players(often because he'd fallen out with them), in their best positions and most natural formations made us into a poor team. That combined with the fact that we stopped playing Cousin and we lost King completely, then tried to replace them with the likes of Folan, Manucho, ***an and Garcia, it was never going to work. It got to be a running joke on 606, that Hull City don't sign strikers(or left-backs), but it wasn't really very funny. I will always be grateful to Brownie for what he did for Hull City, he's the only manager to ever get us into the top flight, he changed the profile of the club forever and he'll always be remembered for it(deservedly so), but that doesn't make me blind to the fact that for the last eighteen months he was in charge, he was completely delusional, had no plan A, B, or C and really didn't look like he had the slightest idea what he was doing.
I think we were lucky. We were lucky that a team like Newcastle failed so spectacularly. History also says that we were lucky to stay up on that amount of points. It doesn't happen too often. Phil Brown did an alright job to keep us in the Championship. What he did from June 2007 until Sunderland at home in December 2008 was remarkable. Just utterly brilliant. The way he fell apart after that Sunderland defeat, the massive over-reaction to two halves of bad football, the negativity, the falling out with key players, the disastrous transfer windows and the ridiculous ego that he and Duffen developed was a real shame.
It wasn't just 2 halves of bad football, it was a completely shambolic refereeing performance by Mike Riley too which gave us no chance from the start, we could have been world beaters that day and we still would have lost due to that fool. The officiating on that day stands out to me more than anything else.
Trust me that wasn't just blaming the ref, if it was I wouldn't remember it so well. He was being his usual 'I'm bigger than the game because I'm in charge' self and ruining everything. It was a refereeing display of utter turd. I guess then when we lost 2-0 away at Burnely in the prem the ref can't have taken any of the blame for it? And when we scraped a 2-1 win at home to Boro due to an incredibly ridiculous offside Geovanni goal we don't have the linesman to thank? It's a sad truth that the officials are ****ing useless from top to bottom.
Certainly not blind to PB’s faults either. It just rankles me when I see the off hand remarks of some posters who should know better. I just wish we could have kept that spine together, the one which read Myhill, Turner, Ashbee, Geo, King/Cousin. It was electric and could just burst onto the opposition in minutes and hurt them. Don’t remember enough of the team selections to discuss poor individual game selection. I know he changed things around a lot at times, he surprised me with that, and certainly put good players on the sidelines when he fell out with them. Maybe in a more forgiving league he would have got away with it, some managers with bigger squads do. Opinion is all a matter of balance isn’t it? My memory is 70% for the good things and 30% for the flawed things, and I cannot help that. Just don’t want this mans memory to go down in the club’s history as “the near club destroyer” which some posters seem to delight in writing. I believe it was Bartlett and Duffen who really let us down in the finance and players contract area. If someone can show me they had nothing to do with that part of the fiasco, I will add it the list of PB’s flaws.
Its how I felt at the time, I just thought we were incredibly lucky to stay up and Brownies karaoke celebration on the pitch was in poor taste, should have been a lot more humble and dignified in my view but its like has been said Brownie is a divisive figure to a lot of fans , I don't see why anybody should be made to feel 'sick' because other fans recognise that he had a lot of flaws
