Mike Phelan, End Of The Internship: Reviewing Bournemouth vs. Hull

Five years ago, when the club found itself mired in the League One mid-table, Bournemouth fans would never have imagined the possibility of winning a Premier League fixture 6-1. It's the sort of scoreline one associates with a Championship team that tries to play possession football at the Emirates, or a newly promoted side who go to the Etihad and set up in an attacking 3-4-3. Nonetheless, far from a thrashing handed out by a top-four titan, that was the score by which Bournemouth thumped Hull City on Saturday, tearing their opponents apart with a glittering display of attacking football. It was a riotous win, a brilliant performance, and one which should leave Bournemouth fans in no doubt that they are either in the midst of a golden era for the club, or part of a collective perception experiment engineered through a heady mix of subliminal conditioning and mind-altering drugs.

Even without the help of mind-altering drugs, Eddie Howe and co. were visibly elated at the final whistle. Meanwhile, the man in the opposite dugout now has to pick himself up from a professional low. Having spent several months as interim manager in the aftermath of Steve Bruce's departure, Mike Phelan was given the position permanently late last week, only to finish his first game with a stonking defeat at the hands of a side which Hull might feasibly have beaten. On the scale of ways to celebrate a fresh career opportunity, that's the equivalent of turning up drunk at your new place of work and shitting in the paper shredder, only to be caught in the act by the on-site night guard.

If Mike Phelan had been interning for the last few months, he'd have struck his superiors as a diligent, committed and meticulous worker; exactly the sort of employee who could turn out to be a genuine asset. This week, they would have offered him a full-time role, and welcomed him to the heart of the business. Then, for the sake of the analogy, he would have caused a localised electrical fire with an old memory stick and burnt down half of their swish, expensive office space, before projectile vomiting over his line manager and breaking down in a fit of tears. That is what it's like to lose 6-1 to Bournemouth in your first game as full-time manager. It does nothing for your career progression, basically.

When he was a managerial intern at Hull, Phelan could argue that he wasn't the finished product. Sure, he didn't know how Excel worked, he sat staring at a blank screen for an entire day and he spilled the occasional pot of piping hot coffee over himself, but other than that he had a great attitude, a strong work ethic and the air of a man who could, with the right support, deliver results. Now that he's landed a permanent position, he's kicked things off by having a workplace meltdown comparable to that of Edward Norton in Fight Club. He'll need to do something special to salvage it from here, and we're not talking about a few funny post-it notes or bringing in caterpillar cake on his birthday.