Duffen hails historic Brown

Ex-Tigers supremo hails departed manager

Last updated: 15th March 2010   Subscribe to RSS Feed

Duffen hails historic Brown

Tribute: Duffen hailed Brown's work

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Former Hull City chairman Paul Duffen insists Phil Brown's exit will not detract from the historic work in East Yorkshire.

Brown was 'relieved of his duties and placed on gardening leave' on Monday with The Tigers second-from-bottom in the Premier League table.

Hull have now lost four consecutive league matches following Saturday evening's last-gasp 2-1 home defeat to Arsenal.

However, it is the positive things that Duffen has chosen to highlight, including Brown guiding City to top-flight football for the first time in their history in 2008.

Although Brown's full-time successor has yet to be named, Duffen believes the club's hierarchy will already have a new man pencilled in.

Historic

"It's a sad, sad day in many ways but the stuff that Phil achieved at Hull City will always live in the record books, so many firsts," Duffen told Sky Sports News.

"He's been resilient and consistent and done a fantastic job at the football club.

"These things rarely happen as knee-jerk decisions. Some of the bookies slashed the odds last week for Phil to be sacked and I'm sure there will have been conversations and movements going on in the background long before today.

"On the face of it you could say it's surprising with nine games to go when it's hard to make any real difference in terms of playing squad, obviously, no windows available to change a side.

"It's probably a reflection of the fact that some of those unpleasant statistics, in terms of the time it's been since Hull won away and the building pressure coming into the run-in, has taken its toll maybe in terms of relationships between the training ground and boardroom.

"I would be surprised if there isn't a new manager already pencilled in. Brian (Horton) and Steve (Parkin) are very capable but it still is disruptive not to have a permanent manager in place."

Comments (1)

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Kev Lamb (Hull City fan) says...

apparently the players knew on friday,so why wait till the monday to announce it,how could the players put there full commitment into the arsenal game?

Posted 13:02 15th March 2010
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