Phil Parkinson woke up this week as the longest-serving league manager in West Yorkshire.

I doubt there was a gold alarm clock to mark the achievement. In fact, the City chief is currently the only serving manager in the vicinity …

Who would have thought that none of the area’s three managers who began the season would still be standing come mid-February?

Jacko, of course, was gone while the season was in its infancy.

Simon Grayson, if anything, lasted longer than many pundits predicted given the whims of Leeds paymaster Ken Bates.

But Lee Clark seemed bomb-proof at Huddersfield – until May at least.

From the outside, it sounds like madness to sack someone who oversaw an unbeaten run that recently rewrote the Football League records.

To go 43 games in a row without losing – effectively an entire season – is mind-blowing.

But those impressive statistics masked one defeat in May and an incredibly costly one.

Peterborough defender Gaby Zakuani rubbed it in when he tweeted a photo of his play-off winners’ medal on the day that Town were toasting their success at wiping Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest from the history books.

But he was right to gloat. Ten months without losing a league match, from January to November, meant nothing against that afternoon at Old Trafford when Clark’s side simply didn’t turn up.

The 3-0 defeat to Posh was their second play-off exit under Clark, who had arrived at the Galpharm in December 2008 after a blink-and-you-miss-it spell with Stan Ternent.

League positions improved year on year from ninth to sixth to third. But the glass ceiling of promotion remained.

City fans can rightly question how their team has consistently under-achieved given the generous budgets at the disposal of the men in the hot-seat.

But those figures were blown out the water by what was on offer at the next junction of the M62.

Only Southampton had more cash at their disposal in League One than Huddersfield last season. And they used it to bankroll a return to the Championship.

Dean Hoyle, the fervent Town fan with the deepest of pockets, has ensured those same resources were available to Clark again this season.

For that he expected one result: promotion.

Fourth spot four points off the second automatic slot was not on the owner’s agenda.

Clark admitted to being “perplexed and shocked” when the axe fell in a phone call the morning after a costly home defeat to second-placed Sheffield United.

The night before, in what turned out to be his final press conference, he had talked of “plenty of twists and turns to come”. But that was one big snake he never saw approaching.

Hoyle felt he had to act to give a new man time to succeed. Sixteen games in fact.

The wisdom of his decision will be known on May 5 when the curtain comes down on the league campaign – or three weeks later at Wembley in the play-off final.

In the surreal world of football management, Grayson is now being talked about as a strong contender for the job. His experience of taking up both Leeds and Blackpool from this level makes him an attractive proposition.

Clark for Leeds now? The bookies reckon so, though his lack of managerial medals probably knocks him down the pecking order.

Whatever pans out, it’s been another reminder of the ejector-seat existence of those in the number one jobs. Sleep easy, Parky!