Bye bye Brown, you won't be missed

So the Premier League loses another manager. With 8 games left and relegation a major threat, Hull City chairman Adam Pearson took action and relieved Phil Brown of his job yesterday.

And no Arsenal fan will miss him.

Whilst the lingering memory for the broader public of a manager who will likely return to Championship level for his next job will be of his astonishing on-field team last season against Manchester City, the memories for Arsenal fans are sourer.

Sure, we have the "Tango Man" chants, and the "you're white and you know you are" follow-up. They got us a sideline in the Mirror but nothing more. We always knew Phil Brown was a joke, it just took his bosses longer to realise it.

What Arsenal and Arsenal fans uniquely found out about Phil Brown was that he is probably one of the worst examples of liars and cheats who's yet managed in the Premier League.

The lying is an old story, but worth repeating. After our contentious FA Cup victory over Hull in March 2009, Phil Brown accuses Cesc Fabregas of spitting at his assistant manager, Brian Horton.

He did not offer evidence, nor did he go on to back up his claims. What he did, in an appalling attempt to divert attention from his side's defeat, was fabricate an incident that has no basis in fact, and turn it into back page news.

All managers are trained in that basic media technique – focussing on a sidenote story to shift blame from their own players. Conventionally, the blame is passed on to referees, with Alex Ferguson probably the most proficient player of that game. Sometimes it's passed onto other managers, with Rafa Benitez repeatedly (desperately?) playing this card as he has done against Ferguson and Sam Allardyce. Sometimes it's passed onto the whole footballing hierarchy, as José Mourinho has done in his paranoid war on Italian Football.

Singling out individual players as negative influences on why their team failed is a rare tactic though. Particularly, as in Fabregas' case, when he wasn't actually playing.

That's a great demonstration of the comic perversity of Brown. In an attempt to be diversionary and provocative he went beyond convention in a way that's just nasty and unpleasant.

The lies I can live with though. They're foolish rather than truly damaging.

The kind of cheating his team perpetrated in his name on Saturday though. The relentless and unnecessary fouling of his team was as bad a display witnessed against us or anyone this season though. Sustained, malicious and with a clear intent to harm witnessed most clearly in Boateng's challenge on Sagna, it was a slur on English football.

In the wake of the Aaron Ramsey incident, it was also a clear attempt to provoke a team whose mental strength could be questioned in a physical battle. That we did not wilt for one second is to our credit.

There's no place for it, and if Adam Pearson's action in getting rid of him was ultimately about saving Hull City's Premiership status, let us as fans feel in the Karma around the sacking a certain moral justice.

So bye bye Brown. Good riddance.

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