Steve Bruce has quit Hull City after the club’s owners tried to rename him ‘Kek the Frog God of Chaos’, we can reveal.
The Allam family made a bold play for their native market by asking Bruce to consider adopting the name of the amphibian deity of ancient Egypt.
But the move backfired when Bruce told them go stuff themselves.
Former Man Utd captain Bruce had been growing restless at the lack of transfer funds available to him and spoke to the FA about becoming England’s new manager.
It seemed he would remain at Hull when Sam Allardyce beat him to the job, but he appears to have drawn the line at renaming himself in accordance with the deification of the primordial concept of darkness in ancient Egyptian religion.
Speaking exclusively to Football Burp, Tigers vice-chairman Ehab Allam refused to rule out appointing an actual frog as Bruce’s successor.
He said: “Obviously we’d prefer a qualified manager posing as a frog, but with three weeks to go until the new season we can’t be too picky.
“Having failed in our attempt to rebrand the club ‘Hull City: Rise of the Dawn’, we thought it best to customise our manager instead.
“Kek the Frog God of Chaos has always been a big inspiration to us, and we hoped to harness his destructive powers to bring mayhem to Premier League defences this season.
“Suffice it to say, this current state of chaos is not the one we had in mind.”
Mike Phelan will take temporary charge after agreeing to change his name to Khepri the God of Scarab Beetles.