Saving Southend?
MIKE WALTERS INSIDE FOOTBALL.. AND OUTSIDE THE BOX It’s because I still love the game but I haven’t got a big contract.. I let the players know I’m in the trenches with them
WISE men say only fools rush in, but Phil Brown’s most daring act of brinkmanship may yet be his finest hour.
Brown is the masked singer who burst into a chorus of Sloop John B when the best trip he’d ever been on kept Hull City in the Premier League on the final day of term in 2009.
And his public dressingdown of the Tigers at half-time, after a supine collapse against Manchester City, remains one of the most desperate attempts by a manager to get a tune out of his players.
But at 61, Brown has put all his quavers, crotchets and minims on the line at Southend United – a club nicknamed the Shrimpers, where there’s one prawn every minute.
Five points adrift of the frontier between League Two’s foothills and non-League shadows, Brown dived in for his second coming on the Thames estuary with just six games to save them from relegation, cheerfully admitting: “People think I must be mad.”
Scratch beneath the surface, however, and Southend have re-hired a Milk Tray man whose reputation as a manager was built on defying the odds.
Six years ago, in his first spell in charge at Roots Hall, Brown was only 26 seconds from defeat against Wycombe when Joe Pigott’s last-ditch equaliser sent the League Two play-off final to penalties.
Brown and opposite number Gareth Ainsworth linked arms on the Wembley touchline, in a hugely underestimated snapshot of sportsmanship, as Daniel Bentley’s shoot-out heroics sent Southend up.
More recently, Brown has enjoyed a pint at 10 Downing Street – not Boris Johnson’s hub of sleaze but a pub in Hyderabad, where he spread his wings in the Indian Super League last year.
Maybe Brown only sings when he’s winning, but why on earth is he putting himself though the wringer again?
“The truthful answer is, yes, I’m in love with the game,” he said ahead of the long-haul trip to take on promotion-chasing Exeter this afternoon.
“Too much? I don’t know – and I haven’t got time for philosophy now. I need to galvanise a group of players and let them know I’m in the trenches with them. If you stand in front of 30 players and tell them: ‘Whatever happens, I’ll be all right because I’ve got a three-year contract,’ you are not going to get a response out of them.
“But it’s a different story if they know we’re all in the same boat and, if I don’t do my job I’ll be out of work in the summer.
“I’m fighting for my life, I’m fighting for a job, and hopefully the message I’m trying to get across will sink in deep.
“As a coach, I know I’ve got to bring my ‘A’ game to the party because we’ve only scored 24 goals in 41 games, so there’s no secret where the problem lies.
“I’ve got five games left to find a way of unlocking the door. If we are going to get out of this it will probably go down
BIG SHOUT ..but Phil Brown has a chance of saving the Shrimpers
to the last game, but think it’s doable.
“I’ve been doing a diploma course on Zoom, bumping into people I’ve locked horns with over the last 40 years – like Billy Davies and Mark McGhee – and the interaction has been brilliant.
“The level of support has been as intense as when we were fighting to take points off each other. They are right behind me.”
Southend are on the football breadline because they have won only 16 of their last 97 games, which included an illfated dalliance with former England defender Sol Campbell, and Tuesday night’s Essex derby at fellow strugglers Colchester looks pivotal.
But Brown does not fear the muck and nettles after beginning his career at lowly Hartlepool, where he was an £80-a-week full-back who advertised his services as a qualified electrician in the matchday programme.
The monkey hangers always lived on the edge of darkness in those days, notably when exchairman Vince Barker sequestrated the goalposts and nets in a financial dispute, leaving Brown’s manager Billy Horner to groan: “I hope we don’t have to put our hats and coats down as posts now.”
Brown laughed: “Jumpers for goalposts? We did that many a time in the local park – we didn’t have a training ground.
“But that’s why we play the game – because we love it.”
I really
‘I need to galvanise the group and if I don’t do my job I’ll be out of work’