AMIDST unprecedented scenes of managerial madness in the top flight of English football, one of your own is somehow caught in the crossfire.
Inexplicably, ridiculously and in the face of everything taught to us by recent football history, there is a groundswell of discontent at Stoke City with Pill's Tony Pulis caught in the crosshairs of insanity.
I find it scarcely credible that Pulis could be under such scrutiny but the landscape of the Premier League seems to shift weekly at the moment as desperate clubs make desperate decisions chasing unprecedented television revenue.
The logic of expecting a new face to achieve unparalleled success with another manager's players escapes me but that hasn't stopped Reading and Sunderland from doing exactly that with their clubs well and truly in the mire.
Southampton sacked Adkins as they didn't think he could keep them in the Premier League. The best you can say for him is he knows how to get out of the Championship, as I've heard many Reading fans say. That'll be the same Championship McDermott won last season.
And while I think media darling status prevents Martin O'Neill from receiving the scrutiny he deserves in the downfall of previous club Aston Villa - hark at Alan Shearer's dismay at the decision on Match of the Day, conveniently forgetting he was appointed Newcastle manager with eight games to go, and was relegated - his dismissal as Sunderland manager is equally strange.
Why now? Why not a fortnight ago before the international break? If the Sunderland board believed in Martin O'Neill but lost that belief after a solitary goal defeat to Manchester United, they want certifying.
And who to replace him? Who do you put a long term investment in as the man to take you forward? Paolo Di Canio, seriously?
I'm at a loss here. I got a shudder up my spine when the former West Ham talisman nearly joined Newport County, let alone a Premier League side.
Did Di Canio do a good job at Swindon? Yes, unquestionably. Not without drama, but Di Canio got the promotion they coveted and did well this term until his departure in terms of results. But Swindon are a giant club for Division Four and a big club for Division Three and that tempers the achievement to a degree.
However, the other side of Di Canio is surely troubling for Sunderland fans. His list of incidents at Swindon that led to headlines is in the Joey Barton realm and documented links to fascist movements in his native Italy will surely turn-off sponsors?
Maybe Sunderland fans don't even know Paolo though. His aversion to travelling north in his West Ham days was so legendary he'll have definitely needed to use his SatNav to find the Stadium of Light.
And there is a chance Pulis will be next. The bookies rate him as second favourite behind ticking time bomb Rafa "he doesn't like them, they don't like him," Benitez as favourite for the chop.
The logic behind that is sound (if only chairmen were as careful as bookies), because it's clear to anyone with ears or eyes and a passing interest that many, many Stoke fans have turned against Pulis.
We've been here before. With Charlton and Alan Curbishley 'we always drop off at the end of the season, he can't take us to the next level,' and Sam Allardyce at Bolton 'we should play better football, Big Sam can't take us to the next level.' We are seeing it at Blackburn. Systematic bad choices by a hapless board are standard at Ewood Park and fans' discontent is entirely understandable. But Steve Keen must be somewhat smug to see them battling relegation when he was hounded out because they'd slipped to third.
Pulis himself has summed the situation up to a tee. "If you are given steak and chips every day, steak and chips become the norm."
When Pulis took over in 2006, Stoke were struggling to rustle up budget lasagne from Romania. In his second season he took them up, against the odds he kept them up and since that first season Stoke are yet to battle relegation since, with an FA Cup final appearance and first European campaign in close to 40 years also in the bag. For the first time in decades Stoke are an established top tier side.
To throw away the stability Pulis brings in pursuit of a nicer style of football - that is all it can be - would be a massive mistake, not least as the Opta stats show Stoke's style has evolved with more passes per match season on season since 2008/9.
Stoke need Pulis and that might well be proven if he's dismissed or chooses to walk away in the summer in the face of mounting criticism. For Potters fans, it might be a painful lesson.
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