Dan: Hull — Transfers, Transfers, Transfers!

Hi there!

Last time I spoke to you guys Hull City had finally secured a return to the top flight after what was a very long Championship season and were to be joined even more surprisingly by Doncaster and Nottingham Forest in the worlds best football division.

The players had earned their break and the squad happily toddled off on holiday, but I had no such respite and began scouring the footballing world for top players (or at least the best available) that would fill the gaps I felt I had in my team. Before we delve into transfers however there is the matter of fixtures, I was eager to see who Hull would kick off the season with, I was hoping for a home tie and to avoid any of the big 6 (basically the big 4 plus Tottenham and Man City).

This is what I was handed…

We kick-off the season with a trip to Stamford Bridge to face League Cup semi-finalists Chelsea, it fails to mention that they are the current Premier League champions however! We also face Liverpool on Boxing Day and wrap up the season at Anfield, great! Here’s my first 3 fixtures for our return to the big time…

I’m thinking we should definitely be taking at least 4 points from these games. I’ve chalked off the Chelsea match for obvious reasons but Blackburn are beatable and Forest are definitely beatable. Another key factor in the future of Hull is the finances, and ours are a mess so that £40million in TV rights will help nicely towards our debt repayments.

Now onto my season expectations. Obviously since the finances are shot I wasn’t expecting a massive budget and in truth was making plans just in case I got no budget. In the end the extra TV money and the fact we’ll be debt free by the season end must have had an impact because this is what I was offered…

Since the club is £4million in the red I can only think that Mr. Assam (my chairman) has dug into his own pockets to supply what seem to be very reasonable budgets for the upcoming season.

In the end I told the board that I would keep Hull City in the Premier League and was given £6.5million to spend plus £50k a week extra wage budget which is good enough for me! And after that the good news just kept coming…

I’ve been tied to The Tigers for another 2 seasons since I only had 1 year left on my remaining deal. I also received a pay packet which has more than doubled from last year to £25k a week, makes you wonder, where’s this cash coming from?

Anyway, enough rambling about the boring pre-season stuff and let’s get down to the exciting part, transfers! And as the title suggests there were a lot of deals done both bringing and booting players to and from the club.

Transfers Out

Like I said in my previous post, the biggest problem for me in pre-season was going to be offloading the overpaid, older, and in some cases not so talented players who were returning from loans. They included Kilbane, Bullard, Gardner, Ghilas, and Olofinjana, who all together were earning almost £100k a week in wages! My first task was to offload these players which I did with relative success. Along with those players, a bunch of players were released on frees to lighten the load at the club and these included Folan, Duke, and Gardner. A more surprising exit was Tomas Horava who played very well last season and scored some important goals, he got upset after I brought in another midfielder and then called me a liar when I told him I was looking to offload players to free up space, out the door he went for a £2.15million profit to Crystal Palace. Robert Koren and James Harper also left the club as expected while Cooper and some other youngsters were loaned out for experience.

Transfers In

Now there’s a lot of these so I’m not going to talk about them, I’m just going to order them by position…

Goalkeeper

Defenders

Midfielders

Forwards

That’s all of them, quite a lot I know so hopefully they won’t take too long to blend and get the fluidity going on the pitch. All in all I think I moved quite well in the market but I always make at least one mistake and I’ll admit now that mistake will probably be Simon Cox. This is how my deals stacked up…

All together the club is only about £2million out of pocket considering the money that was brought in through sales. Albin and Toure have to be the bargain deals while I’m impressed that at £2.6million, Atila Turan was our most expensive signing (told you I’d get him). I would consider my coups to be Woodgate and Grenier, both very good players with large reputations that will figure a lot next season, especially Woodgate since he’s now my captain. I kind of raided Spurs as I captured Caulker on loan and signed their CB reject Khumalo for £2million also. Schmeichel will be Joe Lewis’ backup since I had no other good keeper, but the fans aren’t happy that he came from Leeds. My final 2 deals, Russell and Norwood were both signed for depth, but I’m yet to play Norwood because he’s been on international duty for 2 weeks since I signed him which seems to have boosted his stats a little.

Sorry for such a long post but I’m almost there now, I’ll get through this as quickly as possible since I know people have things to do and my fingers are starting to hurt. ;) My pre-season was a walk in the park but it did allow me to make a profit for the first time in 12 months.

Pre-season Results & Goal Scorers:

All of these games were intense and my team showed good attacking instinct, however, what worries me is that it takes 10-15 minutes for us to get into gear, by which time we could be 3-0 down in the Premiership, we leak goals, and can’t defend set pieces at all! No matter what I do, just like last season, my defenders lose the player in the box and for some reason the keeper just freezes, it’s really frustrating but at least we seem to have the score 1 more than you philosophy down.

Some amazing things happened in pre-season too, Abeid scored 3 goals, all 3 of them were lobs from outside the box, seems this kid has talent and I’ve had to beat Lyon and Roma off with a stick! Also Kieftenbeld showed his striking ability by scoring a 35 yard pile driver against Charlton, the German has impressed me and seems much better than Rosenior, plus he is versatile and can play in midfield as well as his native right back position. Also this happened in pre-season…

You may be thinking, oh well, you beat Sydney FC, great…

Well look at the goal times, we were 2-0 down after 25 minutes thanks to a Thompson double for the Ozzies and to be honest my strikers couldn’t hit a barn door with a machine gun. But then I decided in the 74th minute to bring on Jay Simpson, Johnny Russell, and Juan Albin up front and I think I may have found my first team strike force! They were like robots and seemed wired into each other, Simpson slotted home, before Russell scored from 25 yards, and Albin completed a great comeback by smashing home a Russell through ball on 88 minutes to stun the home team.

Well that’s all for now! All in all I think pre-season has been a massive success, some solid players arrived, some deadwood left, and bar our poor finances, everything is looking good for the upcoming season!

Thanks for reading!