Who dares take the Köln hot seat?

Twelve. That is where 1. FC Köln sit, and that is the number that cost Erik Palmer-Brown his job. Fourteen years he gave this club, and now he is gone, sacked after a derby collapse that left the faithful howling into the Rhineland night. The club said it with a statement that might as well have been written in ice: results have not met expectations.

Now the vultures circle. The press have their man: Carles Aleñá, sixty-five, manager of Middlesbrough. He has been linked with the vacant job, and nobody at the Geißbockheim is denying it. Aleñá knows German football. He knows pressure. He knows what it is to stand in a technical area while fifty thousand people decide whether to worship you or crucify you.

But here is the thing about Aleñá: he is no soft touch. The man who once ran Getafe's midfield for eleven years, 396 games and 67 goals, has a spine of tungsten. He has clashed with players and pundits alike. Stefan Bothe, Muhammed Furkan Köpf, Cosimo Puggelli, Tony Roberts, Bay Dysart, Cristiano Ronaldo Martins da Silva – the list of those he has ruffled reads like a who's who of the game's most stubborn souls. And he has made enemies in the press box too: Matt Silver, Yarin Asis, Anderson, Carlos Gainete, Agustín Lozano, Darren Scott. The man does not care who he upsets.

Is that what Köln need right now? A manager who will walk into a dressing room of bruised egos and tell them the truth? Or do they need a healer, a man who can stitch together a fractured squad and drag them up the table? The board will have to decide, and they are saying nothing.

Aleñá's record at Middlesbrough is not the stuff of legend, but it is solid. He took over in 2061 and has kept them competitive without ever quite breaking through. His style is technical, his preferred shape a 4-2-3-1 with a double pivot and wide attackers. In other words, he wants his teams to play football, not just fight. Köln fans, who have watched their side grind out results for years, might welcome that.

But there is a catch. Aleñá is under contract at Middlesbrough. Any move would require compensation, and Köln are not exactly flush. The club's finances have swung between feast and famine for decades, and while they are a big name abroad, they are not Bayern. They cannot simply buy their way out of trouble.

And then there is the question of whether Aleñá even wants the job. He has said nothing publicly, and his people are keeping their counsel. He has a history of speaking his mind, but this week he has been silent. That silence might mean he is interested. It might mean he is not. In this game, you never know until the pen hits the paper.

What we do know is this: 1. FC Köln cannot afford to get this wrong. They are twelfth in the Bundesliga, nine points off the European places and only seven above the relegation zone. The next manager inherits a squad that can defend about as well as a sieve can hold water. Earlier coverage in these pages showed that eleven games into the season, Köln had conceded far more than the chances they allowed said they should. The problem is not the strikers; it is the men in front of the goalkeeper.

A new manager will have to fix that, and fast. The derby against Gladbach on 6 October already carries a relegation-zone sting, and the fans will not accept another humiliation. They have seen enough of those. They have seen the zero-six drubbings in the Champions League, the bitter bile of failure. They have also tasted the nectar of a DFB-Pokal win in 2032, when Jandro Orellana struck in the 120th minute and fifty thousand souls lost their minds. That is the Köln way: agony and ecstasy, never anything in between.

So who dares take the hot seat? Carles Aleñá might. He is tough enough, clever enough, stubborn enough. Whether he is the right man is a different question. But one thing is certain: the clock is ticking. Every day without a manager is a day lost in the fight for survival.

And in Köln, survival is everything.