Steve Bruce has resigned as Hull City manager after becoming increasingly frustrated by a lack of transfer activity at the newly promoted Premier League club.
With the season only three weeks away, his departure has provoked chaos and unrest at the KC Stadium. Bruce is understood to have left with a heavy heart but felt his position had become untenable and that his much-soured relationship with Ehab Allam, the vice-chairman, was irretrievable.
With Assem Allam, Hull’s owner, to whom Bruce has always been close, seriously ill, and his son Ehab keen to sell up, the manager has been unable to strengthen an injury-ravaged squad. Although Allam Jr has placed takeover talks with two interested consortiums on hold until after the transfer deadline, Bruce failed to sign a senior player this summer.
By way of exacerbating such problems, Michael Dawson, Moses Odubajo, Allan McGregor and Bruce’s son Alex have suffered long-term injuries. Meanwhile, Chuba Akpom and Isaac Hayden, who were on loan from Arsenal last season, have departed, leaving Hull with around 12 fit and experienced players.
It is believed crisis talks with Ehab Allam on Thursday ended badly and, when Bruce failed to appear at the club’s Cottingham training base on Friday morning, coaching staff informed the players he had quit. Intensely loyal to their mentor, they were said to be angry and upset, sentiments reflected by Hull fans who, like the players, had been fearing this moment for some time.
The outgoing manager, who had expressed doubts about his future before and after Hull’s play-off victory against Sheffield Wednesday at Wembley in May, was interviewed for the England job last week but missed out to Sam Allardyce.
Nevertheless, the 55-year-old – who was at the KC Stadium for four years, presiding over two promotions, an FA Cup final and a relegation – knows his stock is currently high and was reluctant to see it damaged by what appears an almost inevitable season of struggle. Having been talked out of resigning by the board when Hull were relegated just over a year ago, Bruce threw everything into a successful promotion campaign but, with Allam Sr no longer involved in the day to day running of the club, and relations with Ehab steadily deteriorating, he felt increasingly out of the loop regarding takeover talks.
He also wondered how much further he could take Hull and was in the dark as to whether any new owners would actually want to retain him. Moreover the former Birmingham, Wigan and Sunderland manager has long felt in need of recharging his batteries by taking a sabbatical. It did not help that the frequent commute from his family home in the Birmingham area was beginning to get him down. A perfect storm was brewing and Bruce had said after that play-off triumph against Wednesday: “I don’t know if I’m staying myself yet,” only subsequently to receive “certain assurances” from the Allams.
As the weeks passed and those recruits did not materialise, behind the scenes tensions heightened and lines of communication with Ehab Allam dried up. Hull executives expressed annoyance that they were not told about Bruce’s interview with the FA in advance but the manager – who was never a frontrunner – told friends he could not get through to anyone on the board to inform them of this development. Roy Keane was installed as the bookmakers’ early favourite. Keane, a former Sunderland and Ipswich manager, has verbally agreed to extend his contract as assistant to Martin O’Neill with the Republic of Ireland.