It's nice to blow the local trumpet as our forgotten heroes return home and the 'Circle Bootroom' mentality grows, however, something inside me is wondering by almost making the affinity to Hull a pre-requisite to player or staff selection, are we restricting our choices in the future? It either instills pride in a hometown mentality or reinforces the parocialism that has restricted the City of Hull's grow for many years. Sensible or suicide?
Impractical. I wouldn't worry about that too much, we live in a "Professional" world where loyalty counts for nothing. Soundbites like "Local" and "Loyalty" are for the consumption of the Yapping Classes as some saddo from CI would say!
People are making too much of the Hull connection, I think. My take is that they are putting people in place who work for and are loyal to Hull City rather than to the manager to avoid major upheaval if we change things at the top in the future.
After watching the press conference on Tiger's Player, I think people are misunderstanding what they mean by "team hull" - it's not that we want Deano and Barmby running the show, because only lercle is good enough, it's more about bringing people in who will have more of an affinity with the club and with the city, than with another member of staff. The thing that seemed to be bugging AP and AA was how much went with Pearson, not just Shakey and Walsh, but half the backroom staff. Pearson wasn't just the manager, the way he worked, he was the full top tier of management. They acknowledge that future managers may want to bring in an assistant, but that's as far as it will go. Not because of the hiring, but because if they leave, they rip the heart out of the club. Basically, we're operating like the Resistance now. Lots of cells. You can take out one operative, but you can't take down the organisation.
sensible thing to do and stops the type of upheaval that has gone on since NP left the club. plus, it hopefully keeps away the money mercenaries that have festooned the club over the past 3 years or so.
I'm not sure we have the quality of ex-players to have a strong boot room arrangement at City. Obviously the big clubs have successful big name ex-players going right through every level of the club and that experience feeds through to the players. Most of our ex-players / coaches / managers plied their trade in the lower leagues and I don't think they would be the ideal choice for a club that has aspirations of reaching and staying in the top tier. It's good that we have someone with the pedigree of Barmby to take the top job (and hopefully succeed) but I can't see a lot of others having the same quality.