City’s veteran midfielder Nick Barmby is to join the club’s coaching staff, the club’s official website has reported this evening.

It was something of a surprise when the 36 year old was offered a contract extension earlier this summer given his relative lack of involvement last season, with just six League starts in 2009/10. With the club’s parlous finances a matter of common knowledge, it may have been entirely natural for his six year stint at his home town club to come to a conclusion.

Instead, his association with the Tigers may be prolonged for some time with the news that his former Middlesbrough team-mate and new City manager Nigel Pearson has added coaching to his playing duties. They were together at the Riverside stadium for the duration of Barmby’s 17 month tenure there, and renew their acquaintance some 14 years after Barmby left Middlesbrough.

It’s one of those moves that look terrific on paper. Barmby’s professional career will be 20 years long by the end of the coming season and during his time as a player he’s spent time in the Premier League, Championship and third tier, as well as an impressive haul of 23 England caps, gathering immense experience. He’ll be the most familiar face for the new manager as he gets to know his new charges, and should act as a strong link between the management and playing staff. Well, the theory sounds good, doesn’t it?

In a development equally as crucial as the appointment of Hull City’s new manager, it has been confirmed that Dean Windass will represent the Tigers at this summer’s Masters tournament.

Windass has previously featured at the competition for Middlesbrough but will now take his place in City’s squad of nine for the Yorkshire branch of the  competition on Sunday July 25th at the Sheffield Arena.

Immortal skipper Justin Whittle, for it is he, has retained the services of Steve Wilson, Jamie Forrester, Neil Allison, Duane Darby and Leigh Jenkinson from the knock-kneed squad that didn’t exactly do itself justice last summer, while Neil Mann joins up for the first time. The ninth place will be taken by either Steve Swales or Mark Greaves, depending on availability or fitness, or something else. Not involved this time are John Eyre, Lee Warren and John Anderson.

City will compete for a place in the Grand Final against veteran teams from the two Sheffield clubs, Barnsley, Doncaster Rovers, Bradford City and debutants Huddersfield Town.

It’s been widely touted for days, and City have now confirmed that Nigel Pearson is to becomes the Tigers’ new manager.

His new boss and near-namesake Adam Pearson promised a big name – and though Nigel Pearson is maybe not immediately associated with football’s bigger names, a quick glance at his CV suggests greater depth than many more high-profile appointments.

His last role saw him take Leicester up from the third tier at the first attempt, an impressive feat given the off-field turmoil at the club at the time. What followed was even more remarkable, as the Foxes came within a penalty shoot-out of making the Championship play-off final.

Previous jobs have seen him manage Carlisle – he was in charge for Jimmy Glass’ famous late-winner – and Southampton, with coaching roles at Newcastle, West Brom and in the England U21 set-up. Aged 46 and with a career seemingly on the up, his appointment is something of a coup for City given the gloom that seemed to swirl around the club a few months ago.

The Tigers are to pay Leicester compensation, likely to be in the region of quarter of a million pounds and have hinted that money is available for team strengthening in the wake of this summer’s exodus. A lack of funds and support is rumoured to be the reason for his unhappiness at Leicester, whose finances remain in poor shape, and it appears that the Tigers have enjoyed some fine luck with the timing of their approach.

Joining him in East Yorkshire will be Craig Shakespeare and Steve Walsh, who’ll combine the roles of assistant manager, coach and chief scout.

With wearying inevitability, Stephen Hunt is no longer a City player. He is to join Steven Mouyokolo at Wolves, their second raid on our squad in under a week, as usual for an “undisclosed fee”.

Mick McCarthy has been a long-term admirer of the Irish international and had a series of bids rejected for the player in January. However, City’s relegation from the Premier League coupled with the club’s troubled finances made a move back to the top flight a certainty.

The fee is unlikely to match the £5m that was reputedly offered for his services during the last transfer window, though the statement on City’s official website declares it “a deal that also helps the Tigers to further improve the Club’s financial situation”, suggesting that a sizeable sum is heading this way.

In one rather depressing sense, it’s been a useful summer in terms of transfers out. Despite Paul Duffen’s comical assertions to the contrary the club is severely hamstrung by debt, and the Tigers have made serious strides in offloading players while recouping handy seven-figure sums for them. Even if it’s rather galling as supporters to see our best players leave, the overriding concern must be the club’s financial viability.

Nonetheless, as the Supporters’ Player of the Season, his loss an obvious one. His energetic displays and useful goals from midfield kept City in with a chance until the end of the season – had he remained fit, things may have turned out very different. As it is, his exuberant performances and extravagent mane will be well remembered in East Yorkshire.

It was, we must allow, inevitable. City’s better players want better than Championship football; the finances dictate that sizeable transfer bids must be accepted.

So as we see Steven Mouyokolo leave the Tigers in favour of Premier League survivors Wolves, we must remind ourselves of those facts. An “undisclosed fee” has been paid, likely to be similar to the £2.5m that City paid to Boulogne – much of which is still owed to the French club. Mouyokolo has penned a four year deal at Molineux as Mick McCarthy aims to do what the Tigers failed to do, and strengthen properly in readiness for a second crack at the top flight.

After a slow start in East Yorkshire, which saw rumours about the player being unhappy at his lack of first team opportunities, Mouyokolo seized a place in City’s defence in the second half of last season and impressed greatly. His loss is a huge one, though presumably one that City willl have expected since relegation was confirmed. He’s certain to be a star at Wolves, and his gutsy displays in a losing battle mean we wish him well.

The fixtures are out for City’s 2010/11 campaign, and while they’re not quite as eagerly awaited as was the case two years ago, a clutch of Yorkshire derbies and a couple of new grounds to visit does lend some minor interest.

City will start the new Championship with a home game against Swansea before travelling to Millwall a week later. Boxing Day takes City to local rivals Sheffield United, New Years Day see the Tigers host Leicester before a Monday 3rd January trek to Portsmouth.

There are two new grounds to tick off – Doncaster’s Keepmoat on Saturday 28th August and Cardiff’s imaginatively titled Cardiff City Stadium on Saturday 11th September. More excitingly, City’s first trip to Nottingham Forest since 1977 is a ground-hopping treat we must wait until Saturday 5th March for.

City will finish the 2010/11 season with a trip to Bristol C on Sunday 8th May, while easily the least attractive fixture of the season is a Tuesday night fixture in Swansea next April. Lovely stuff.

We’d helpfully reproduce the fixtures in full, but the FA and Football League disapprove and would probably deploy attack helicopters on AN Towers, so peruse the entire list here instead.

6000 miles from Hull, Richard Garcia made a little piece of history for City this evening: the first player with the Tigers to feature at a World Cup.

He was one of Australia’s better players as they fell to a convincing 4-0 defeat to Germany in Durban, a result that sees them fall to the bottom of Group D. They started well and Garcia nearly opened the scoring after three minutes, but ended the match well beaten and with ten men after Everton’s Tim Cahill was rather harshly sent off with the score at 2-0. The City man played on the left wing, and was puzzlingly withdrawn after 63 minutes.

The pre-tournament outsiders in a qualifying stage that also includes Germany, Serbia and Ghana, making the second round was always likely to be difficult; it now looks highly improbable. Nonetheless, it’s a huge honour for Garcia, and another little illustration of what a surreal few years we’ve had.

Australia take on Ghana in Rustenburg next Saturday. Following his impressive display in adversity against the ominously strong Germans, it’d be something of a surprise of Garcia didn’t feature once again.

Almost three months after he was placed on gardening leave as City made an ill-fated managerial swap in a doomed attempt to retain a place in the Premier League, Phil Brown has formally departed the club.

A decidedly business-like statement on City’s official website has declared that “Phil Brown’s contract has ended with immediate effect and that he is no longer the manager of Hull City Football Club”, following the conclusion of negotiations relating to the outstanding wages owed on his contract, thought to be in excess of £1m.

It brings to an end Brown’s three and a half year association with the club, which has coincided with an extraordinarily eventful period for the Tigers and whose reign brought about the greatest day in City’s history. So, why not revisit the Definitive Phil Brown 2007-2010?