“Swerving east, from rich industrial shadows, And traffic all night north” Here, by Philip Larkin Hull is different. Not bad different, but flat different, Yorkshire different, white telephone box different, Larkin different, end of the line different.

For much of the past three years, Phil Brown has been the ideal manager for the city’s football club, quirky and cocksure, idiosyncratic and very visible. Different, in other words. Whether he likes it or not, he can no longer escape from his difference.

Liverpool used to specialise in taciturn managers; quiet, solid men who expressed themselves through their players’ genius. Brown has followed a different path, establishing himself as the crux of Hull City’s story in a bid to relieve pressure from his team. It was Brian Clough’s blueprint and one adapted by the likes of Roy Keane.

They can be complex and compelling people, but football spits out clichés and just as Keane is portrayed as intense and unhinged and Kevin Keegan is tarred unfairly as a serial quitter, so Brown is widely perceived as . . . well, a bit of a berk. It is a distortion of an intelligent, personable figure, proud of his North East heritage and smitten with his profession, but these things can stick. Sometimes they infiltrate the fabric of a club.

There are a myriad of factors behind Hull City’s difference, their rise and decline, but Brown has been at the fulcrum of all of it. Just as his appointment as caretaker manager on December 4, 2006 was the catalyst for the team to clamber out of the relegation zone of the Coca-Cola Championship, so the 50-year-old became the personality that subsequently propelled their promotion to the Barclays Premier League.

Although his elevation at the KC Stadium was pushed through by Adam Pearson — whose return to the club as chairman is imminent — his relationship with Brown was not cast-iron by the time that Pearson was bought out by Paul Duffen and Russell Bartlett for £13 million in 2007. Bartlett was the money-man, Duffen the fixer who embraced Brown’s management style with fervour.

To use the parlance, they had a go; suddenly, Hull were bidding for exotic players, speculating to accumulate, and when Dean Windass volleyed them into English football’s top flight for the first time in their 104 years of history, momentum was behind them. They went to Newcastle United, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur and won, with Brown, complete with headset and microphone, prancing on the touchline like a fitness instructor.

Whether fuelled by ambition or the glittering allure of success, there are many recent examples of clubs living beyond their means. Duffen’s resignation came after the publication of a report that suggested that relegation would see them needing to raise £23 million to meet their liabilities, although he said last night: “That probably means we have the best set of books in the Premier League.”

When they spent a club-record £5 million on Jimmy Bullard in January, Fulham were staggered by the figures being quoted for a player with a dismal injury record and who is now 31. Hull were attempting to make a statement, but notwithstanding that Bullard immediately succumbed to a significant knee problem, it had a desperate feel.

When Bullard signed, Hull were contemplating a sequence of six league matches without victory and the extraordinary image of Brown delivering a half-time team-talk to his players on the pitch at Manchester City, where they lost 5-1, was fresh in the memory. That moment at the City of Manchester Stadium was hailed as pivotal and, in the football world, it has become accepted fact.

“I think that’s just a convenient peg for commentators to hang their hats on,” Duffen said. “Did Phil lose the dressing room? Enough players have come out subsequently to say it made no difference whatsoever. I haven’t heard one player in public or private say anything else.

“I know they’ll break this stagnant streak they’re in because they’ve got the ability to get out of it. Phil knows better than anybody that he’s in a results business, but I think he’s got the ability to survive it.”

But does everyone? Have the increasingly melodramatic managerial tics, the stroll with his squad to the site of Boothferry Park, the “rescue” of a suicidal woman on the Humber Bridge, the confiscation of the players’ dartboard and removing the plug from their coffee machine, had any positive effect? Does Pearson’s finger hover over the trigger?

Hull play away to Burnley tomorrow. Brown must be yearning for one of those rare Saturdays when his players do the talking. There were few quips at his press conference yesterday. Is his difference no longer the story and simply the problem?

Rise and fall: how Hull City hit giddy new heights

1997-98 Hull finish 22nd in the fourth tier, the worst position in their history.

February, 2001 David Lloyd, the former owner, calls in the bailiffs after a wrangle over unpaid rent. Hull are briefly locked out of Boothferry Park. They also survive a High Court winding-up order over an unpaid VAT bill, but go into administration.

March, 2001 Adam Pearson, the former Leeds United commercial director, and Peter Wilkinson, an internet entrepreneur, buy the club for £360,000.

December, 2002 Hull move to the KC Stadium, a 25,000-seat, £43.5 million arena paid for by the city council.

2003-04 Under Peter Taylor, Hull are promoted to the third tier.

2004-05 Hull earn back-to-back promotions and reach the Coca-Cola Championship.

2005-06 The club finish eighteenth. Taylor leaves for Crystal Palace.

December, 2006 Phil Brown takes over as caretaker manager after Taylor’s replacement, Phil Parkinson, is sacked. Brown, Parkinson’s first-team coach, is appointed permanently by Pearson in January.

May, 2007 Hull finish 21st.

June, 2007 Pearson and Wilkinson sell the club for £13 million to a consortium headed by Paul Duffen, with Russell Bartlett, an Essex-based property tycoon, the major shareholder.

May, 2008 In Brown’s first full season, Hull reach the Championship play-off final, and a stunning goal from Dean Windass gives them a 1-0 victory over Bristol City.

September, 2008 Hull beat Arsenal 2-1 at the Emirates Stadium and win their next three fixtures to sit third in the table at the end of October.

December, 2008 They visit Manchester City and are 4-0 down at half-time. Brown holds a team-talk on the pitch. Hull lose 5-1.

January, 2009 Jimmy Bullard joins from Fulham for a club-record £5 million but is injured in his first game and does not play again until October.

March, 2009 Hull lose 2-1 away to Arsenal in the FA Cup and Brown accuses Cesc Fàbregas of spitting at Brian Horton, the Hull assistant manager. The FA later clear Fàbregas of improper conduct.

May, 2009 After a run of only two league wins since October 25, Hull go into the final game of the season needing a victory over Manchester United to guarantee survival. Hull lose 1-0 but Newcastle United’s defeat by Aston Villa means that Newcastle are relegated. Hull finish seventeenth. Brown grabs the mike to lead a celebratory on-pitch singalong.

October, 2009 The club are third bottom after ten league games, having lost 4-1 to Sunderland, 5-1 to Tottenham Hotspur and 6-1 to Liverpool. Duffen resigns as chairman after a report by the club’s auditors warns of potentially serious financial shortfalls if the club is relegated.

Words by Tom Dart