Source: SKY_Sports
Turner - Players respect Brown
Former Hull City defender Michael Turner has denied Tigers boss Phil Brown lost the respect of his squad with his infamous half-time team talk at Manchester City.
Brown gave his shell-shocked side a very public dressing down on the field at Eastlands on Boxing Day last year with Hull chasing shadows and 4-0 down against the rampant hosts.
Some critics have claimed that was a turning point in the Tigers' season, with a dismal second half of the campaign following and relegation only avoided on the very last day.
But Turner, who moved away from the KC Stadium in the summer when he joined Sunderland in a big-money move, claims the players accepted the events of last December.
Turner told the Daily Mail: "There's no way he lost the dressing room. I'm not sure it actually had that much of an impact on the dressing room. The week before we'd lost badly to Sunderland, and we were taking another tonking.
"I know how I felt that day, dazed. We were 4-0 down. I wasn't thinking: "What the hell's he doing keeping us on the pitch?" I was more worried about what the hell had just happened.
"I had my head between my knees. I can hardly remember what the manager said. There probably was a bit of bitching about it but Phil Brown's the manager and the players respected that. He makes the decisions. There's no way he lost the dressing room.
"We were a team that was new to the Premier League and you get swings in form like that. We started well but then we struggled, and yet did enough to stay up. Phil Brown's a good coach and he was a good manager for me."
One of the greatest learning curves of Turner's career came when he was a 16-year-old with Charlton and spent six months in Italy with Inter Milan as part of a player exchange programme between the two teams.
The young defender was then handed the task of marking Christian Vieri in his heyday as Inter organised a game between their academy and the first-team.
He added: "It was brilliant. Vieri and Recoba up front, Seedorf in midfield, Zanetti. Great players, great day. We got absolutely hammered. We lost 7-0.
"I forget how many goals Vieri scored. Six I think. He was a beast. I remember ringing home and telling my mates about it.
"I learned so much out there. The Italians do a lot of things differently. At the academy we'd study in the morning and train in the afternoon. And a few times we got to train with the first team. Just amazing."
