After a sobering 4-1 whooping by an impressive Southampton at the weekend everyone involved with the Tigers will now be accepting that the honeymoon period is over, blind optimism is being nudged out of the way by stark reality and the pundits who backed city to be relegated at the end of the season are breathing a little more comfortably at their credibility remaining intact.
In no way am I suggesting that because of one big defeat in 11 games Hull City should start manning the lifeboats and prepare for dropping through the trapdoor, far from it, but what we witnessed as supporters against the Saints is the sort of class football that any team is capable of playing this season and we need to batten down the hatches and prepare for more of the same given the limited squad and injury problems we face.
It is equally possible that Hull City are capable of beating a so called “top side” as we’ve seen some incredible results against the run of form so far. Hull City have beaten both Geordie sides in Newcastle and Sunderland yet they can go away and turn the form book on its head by beating Tottenham and Man City respectively yet Hull City could not contain either of these clubs so it goes to show that anyone is literally capable of beating anyone in what must be the most unstable and unpredictable Premiership campaigns to date.
City’s next game will be equally as tough as Southampton. Crystal Palace, drawing 0-0 against Everton who are a top six side given that Everton beat Hull City 2-0 will demand that Steve Bruce takes a lesson or two from the recent 4-1 defeat and the lesson must come from the second half of the game which technically resulted in a 1-1 draw.
Sagbo’s goal which was coolly placed past Borus after a saint’s defensive error gave City slight hope that we have a potential regular goal scorer as he seems to have at last found his composure since his opening game fiery reaction against Norwich were he saw red and then a red card and was sent off for a head butt. The biggest shame about the visit to St Mary’s is that the match was being scrutinised by England manager Roy Hodgson. There were six players on the park that were looking to do well to impress but only three of them managed it. Lambert who scored his 33rd penalty from 33 attempts, Lallana who turned in spells of Brazilianesque genius and Rodriguez who put in an unsung heroes shift supporting and backing up the front line.
The other three players all but waved goodbye to any aspirations of a flight to Rio next year were Hull City’s booked Davies who had his toughest task to date trying to stem the flow of insurgent saints attackers, Livermore who seemed a bit star struck on the day and below his best and also his midfield partner Tom Huddlestone who didn’t show the premiership class required to gain a second thought from Hodgson, at least on this occasion with the clock for permanent squad membership ticking by.
Hull City will be looking to strengthen the squad in January but hotly talked about possible, Shane Long from WBA who was seconds away from being a Tigers player in September has just had his price tag amended North thanks to yet another outing for the Baggies and an equalising goal in true no nonsense style which will make negotiations that much more difficult as Long now seems to be very much part of Steve Clarke’s plans, in fact you could argue “Long term plan”.
So for Steve Bruce, it’s firmly back to the drawing board and for the players back to the training ground to see what we can muster up for the next home game against manageress Crystal Palace unless they can appoint former assistant at Real Madrid, Aitor Karanka as their new boss.
So to recap, we’ve just seen bottom club Palace draw against sixth placed Everton and second to bottom club Sunderland beat eighth place Man City so predicting the result between City and Palace will be best left to the statisticians and form book studiers who will be as accurate as a blindfolded person sticking a pin into a random list of possibilities so realistically it’s up to Bruce and the boys to shuffle the deck in their own favour, come up with a few aces a couple of running flushes and bounce back from a bad day at the office….And definitely not call any bluffs. One thing we can all count on at thee KC on the 23rd is a full house. Kings and queens.