PHIL Parkinson may still be under contract at Colchester United but he looks set to begin next season as the new manager at ambitious Hull City.Parkinson tendered his resignation as U's boss on Wednesday afternoon, just a month after guiding the Essex club into the Championship for the first time in their history.

By Carl Marston

PHIL Parkinson may still be under contract at Colchester United but he looks set to begin next season as the new manager at ambitious Hull City.

Parkinson tendered his resignation as U's boss on Wednesday afternoon, just a month after guiding the Essex club into the Championship for the first time in their history.

The Layer Road club have refused to accept his resignation but Hull chairman Adam Pearson gave more than a hint that Parkinson was the man he wanted to replace Peter Taylor in the KC Stadium hot-seat.

The timing of Parkinson's announcement was interesting - it arrived just 24 hours after Taylor was officially unveiled as the new manager at fellow Championship club Crystal Palace.

Pearson has stopped short of naming Parkinson as his main target - in fact his only one - but he was set to make an approach for the talented 38-year-old U's boss yesterday.

On hearing the news of Parkinson's shock resignation, Pearson said: “If Phil Parkinson has resigned then that's something that we need to take note of and act upon. It's an interesting development. It's an opportunity we will look at today (Thursday).”

Hull supremo Pearson is well-known as being a long-time admirer of Parkinson, which is not surprising when considered the amount of success that the former Reading player-coach has enjoyed during his reign of just over three years at Layer Road.

Parkinson's crowning glory was to mastermind the U's automatic promotion to the Championship last season, against all the odds, especially operating on a very limited budget- they finished second to champions Southend United.

But he also brought a lot of cup success to Colchester, following several seasons of FA Cup anguish that had included humiliating defeats at the hands of several non-league outfits, like Gravesend & Northfleet and Bedlington Terriers.

The U's terrific cup runs earned them glamorous away ties at Premiership heavyweights Blackburn Rovers and Chelsea, and there were also League Cup encounters against the likes of West Brom (2-1 victory) and Southampton.

Whereas Parkinson managed to work wonders on a very small income, he would be sure to be given greater freedom to spend money in the transfer market at Hull, if he was to move to Humberside.

Colchester remain determined to retain the services of their manager but it appears likely that a compensation package will have to be thrashed out between the two clubs.

Hull are fully prepared to pay the U's a big sum for poaching their manager, not least because they received £250,000 themselves, from Crystal Palace to compensate for losing Taylor to the Selhurst Park club.

Tigers chairman Pearson is expecting a long, drawn-out procedure. He remarked: “It might take time.”

Although not referring to Parkinson by name, he did go on to describe the man he was targeting to Hull's local newspaper, the “Hull Daily Mail” - and it bears an uncanny resemblance to the current Colchester boss!

He said: “All I can say so far is that he's contracted to another club, and that he's young. Obviously conversations will be had and plans put in place to take things forward.

“I couldn't honestly put a time frame on it. It depends on how long it takes to get this particular manager and how negotiations go. It could take a long time,” concluded Pearson.

Parkinson has proved himself to be very much a modern-day manager, another factor that appeals to Pearson - the Hull chairman wants to employ a professional off-the-pitch approach for next season, with help from several sports scientists and nutritional experts. Parkinson employed a sports psychologist at Colchester last season.

U's supporters will still cling to the hope that Parkinson can be persuaded to withdraw his resignation following talks with chairman Peter Heard and the U's Board of Directors but that seems unlikely.

Fellow Championship clubs Preston North End, Plymouth Argyle and Sunderland are also hunting for new managers but Hull is the big favourite to give Parkinson his second managerial job in football.