I wonder if anyone was as astonished as I was at the events following the substitution of Geovanni in Hull’s home defeat to Blackburn the other week?

It was not the substitution as such, nor the reaction of the fans, the player or the manager to the events that unfurled after the number 10 board was hoisted up, but the subsequent response from the press to what actually happened that has left me somewhat bemused.

Now whether we like it or not, we are heavily influenced the media reaction to games and the sport in general. Whilst fans opinions are no doubt as dyed in the wool as ever they have been, we are so swamped by the TV radio, newspaper and web hysteria to any little thing that happens on or off the pitch, that inevitably we are led by it.

So if you read the Sundays or the follow-up press during the week, you would have learned about how the likeable Phil Brown, a young English manager of the un-fancied and (until recently) over-performing Premiership new boys, was affronted by the petulant reaction of Brazilian playmaker Geovanni to being substituted. And yet the MOTD coverage revealed a far different story.

When the no.10 board went up, it was the Hull fans that went ballistic. Quite clearly, this was a substitution that no one in a Tigers shirt wanted and more to the point, no one understood. Losing at home again and needing a spark from somewhere, the sense in hauling off the Brazilian for the ageing plodder Nick Barmby was clearly lost on everyone – and the crowd quite clearly turned on the manager.

The TV shot of a whole bank of fans standing to voice their astonishment at the decision to the manager, arms out wide and faces set in disbelief, told the story good and proper.

Geovanni’s albeit unprofessional reaction was in fact no different to 20,000 of the paying public, and that most telling of chants of “You don’t know what you’re doing” told the real story of that afternoon’s football match - Phil Brown had lost the confidence of the fans and it seems, some of the players.

And yet all we read about in the days to follow was how the petulant reaction of the Brazilian cannot be tolerated by the Hull management and ‘how no player is bigger that the club’. Geovanni will no doubt be fined and I’ll bet will be gone in the summer as well, but the fans of Hull City could see the bigger picture even if the massed media missed the plot altogether.

So what went on there? Is there protectionism for an up and coming English manager? Is it that anti ‘johnny foreigner’ culture that puts the focus on Geovanni rather than Brown? Is Hull City too low profile to make a fuss about? Are the journos covering these games simply oblivious to the feelings of the people that pay to watch?

Probably a bit of each but whatever the reason, Phil Brown has got away with it - for now. If they stay up, he’ll be remembered as the man who kept Hull in the Premiership and there may even be a bigger job awaiting (hello Newcastle?). But these things have a habit of coming back and biting hard, and it seems that the fans of Hull City have very sharp teeth.