Dan: Hull — It’s Been A While…

Hi there!

Well it’s been a while since I entered a post on FMS, about 2 weeks I think, thanks to some computer issues but they’re all fixed so on with the story. Last time I left you we were sitting top of the league with a nice gap between ourselves and Burnley, so, did we manage to keep the gap there or did Hull experience an almighty collapse and blow it…

February Results

February Scorers

As you can see not a bad month. A couple of disappointing draws against Bristol City, Sheff Utd, and Derby (who seem to be my bogie team), but other than that nothing to worry about. This is the bit where I’d usually go into more detail but unfortunately I can’t really remember what happened in these games. Abeid got his first goal for the club to equalise against Sheffield but that’s all I know…

March Results

March Scorers

Not a great month, you know things are bad when you can’t deliver a beating to Scunthorpe! They’re my rivals too which makes things even worse. After that I wanted to pick ourselves up against Forest, but instead we went on to blow the lead twice! Abeid scored a beautiful lob for our first but that’s the only positive in this game. After Forest things only got worse! McLean put us ahead only for us to completely fold in the 2nd half, it was a little bit pathetic to be honest. That defeat led to me changing my tactics (again) and taking away the ‘more expressive’ instruction from my team, which is a shame considering we have the best technical ability and highest flair in the league. Anyway that change seemed to work as we bossed Norwich and used the ball much more wisely to record our first win in a month! This stat from the Nottingham Forest game sums up our March performance:

Yeah, not good…

But one good thing did come out of March, Corry Evans won Young Player of the Month and then went on to say how much he loved everything about Hull City, me thinks a permanent deal could be on the cards next season :)

So with Atila Turan and now Corry Evans joining the Hull band wagon hopefully I’ll be able to bring them to East Yorkshire on a more permanent basis next season. Anyway, I’m sure you’re wondering about team ratings so here they are…

As you can see our recent poor form has kind of crippled morale but we have an ‘easy’ run of games coming up, I say ‘easy’ because Derby and Scunthorpe should have been ‘easy’ but they turned out to be tricky games. We’ll start at the bottom of the list, Matt Duke is still yet to play and he shouldn’t hold his breath whereas it would be a brave man that bet on Koren to be at Hull next season. Cooper has disappointed at Kilmarnock only getting a 6.4 so far after playing 10 games for Hull and gaining a 7.1! Abeid is quite low down the list but is starting to show flashes of genius in the trequartista role while Harper will join Koren on the bus out of Hull at the seasons end. Solano and Barmby will be released and Mannone will return to Arsenal, not much to say there, and pretty much Joe Lewis and everyone above is safe, unless they single handedly bring down our title push.

Player of the Post

A strange one this time. Since none of the players at the club deserves this prestigious award I decided to give it to one of my loanees…

Firstly look at his rating for the last 5 games, he has 4 goals in 5 games and has racked up a 7.2 rating since joining League 2 MK Dons. However it gets more impressive…

I’m starting to see why he’s labelled the next Michael Owen, he seems to have great finishing ability. This is proved by the fact he was on loan at Colchester before January for 3 months and reached double figures for them too. Hopefully his attributes will increase enough to push for a first team spot in the future.

Now onto the Championship table…

So with only 7 games to go we’re sitting top by 5 points which isn’t ideal but it’ll do. Doncaster are making a real attempt at 2nd place too which is more than impressive and Burnley could actually be top if they didn’t just mimic whatever result my team got. I would say promotion is probably a 3 horse race now, Hull, Burnley and Doncaster the only teams with a real chance of automatic. Leicester are there too but I think they may be just behind the pace a little too much.

Since it’s so late in the season I thought it might be interesting to have a look at the bottom 5 of the Premier League to see who I could potentially be replacing next season…

Well Newcastle aren’t doing too well, but WBA find themselves in exactly the same situation, 4 points from safety with 8 games remaining, not looking good. Wigan are down there too but have a much better chance of surviving whereas Birmingham and West Ham could easily be dragged into the mire.

Now just one more thing, and it’s the ever more depressing financial situation…

We’ve got just under £5million left in the bank account and I’m starting to doubt the chairman’s philosophy of paying the debt off quickly. If he doesn’t start putting money into the club then we’ll be skint by the end of the season!

Well that’s all for now, my next post will be a season round-up where we’ll finally see if Hull City can win the npower Championship for the first time in their history!

Thanks for reading!