What to make of Hull City? On Boxing Day, the Premier League’s bottom side lost to Manchester City by three goals. This should not have come as any kind of surprise: Hull are where they are because they have just 12 points from 18 games, along with a goal difference of minus-25. It’s fair to say, by this point in the season and by the standards of the league, that Hull are a bit rubbish. Maybe even a lot rubbish.
Hull City is a bad team, but not yet a doomed one
The Tigers entered this season as the biggest favorites to get relegated. Not much has changed, but they’re putting up a better fight than expected.
Photo by Nigel Roddis/Getty Images
That said, Hull may not be any good, but look some distance from broken. For 71 minutes, they took advantage of a fairly tepid Manchester City performance to keep their stronger opponents at bay. Dieumerci Mbokani bounced and bundled around up front, keeping City’s centre backs honest; Sam Clucas bustled around usefully in midfield; and Michael Dawson, Curtis Davies, and the goalpost kept things just about secure at the back. It was almost encouraging … until Andrew Robertson stuck out a foot, tripped Raheem Sterling, and it all went wrong from there.
The positive spin, if such a thing can be taken from another defeat and another pointless weekend, lies in that encouragement and the nature of the performance. It looks as though the players haven’t given up on their season yet; that they’re still working for each other and for their manager, Mike Phelan. This is what struggling teams like to focus on: if they keep working, keep plugging away, then fortune will turn.
On the other hand, if Hull are working hard (which they are), are giving it everything (which they seem to be), and are still unable to squeeze out the results they need, then the obvious conclusion is that the team just aren’t strong enough. Sure, the footballing gods love a work ethic. Who doesn’t? They also look kindly on teams that don’t give away a penalty every other game.
Certainly, Hull’s squad on paper does seem a little underpowered for the Premier League. Yet the same is true of Burnley, their fellow newly promoted side, who have just picked up their sixth win of the season and are sitting six points clear of the relegation zone and eight points above the Tigers. The margins are fine, and the excellent, England-worthy form of Tom Heaton and Michael Keane has been a boon for Sean Dyche’s side. And it may yet turn out that home form alone can’t keep a team up. Still, the difference at the moment is instructive.
Perhaps the real lesson of this season’s relegation race so far is not one of squad investment or work ethic but something slightly more diffuse. The three teams currently in the relegation zone — Hull, Swansea City, and Sunderland — have different problems on the pitch, for each unhappy football team is unhappy in its own way. But they share the fact that their early season was something of a mess.
In Sunderland’s case, this was their unanticipated change of manager. The England job is the football staffing equivalent of an act of God: all of a sudden, Sam Allardyce was gone, and everything had to be rejigged to accommodate David Moyes. At Swansea, they’ve chewed through two managers already, they’ve gutted their squad, and discontent is simmering among the fans. And Hull’s troubles are myriad: an unpopular and unwell owner; a thoroughly disgruntled fan base; the resignation of Steve Bruce; and a summer’s reinforcement seemingly conducted with a pin, a sticker album, and a random number generator. At least £13m club-record signing Ryan Mason is back from injury.
Plenty may change, but this season is currently looking like another warning from football to its practitioners: all the hard work and effort in the world can’t prevent chaos off the field and in the dugout from bleeding onto the pitch. Presumably ambitious owners will start to prioritise sensible and coherent forward planning, develop long-term strategies, and take steps to ensure that managerial departures have a minimal impact on the club’s overall direction. That would make sense, right?
None of that will be any help to Hull, of course, who are already deep in the sticky stuff. They will likely have to try take a more traditional approach to remaining in the Premier League. The January transfer window has expanded one of football’s more enduring cliches, and it’s now a season of two halves. For struggling clubs, this means that they spend the first half finding out just how bad they are, then the second finding out if they’ve managed to spend enough to make up for it.
At least whoever ends up moving to the KC Stadium has a hard-working team to drop into, and just four points, at the moment, between them and safety. Perhaps that’s why the heads haven’t quite dropped yet. They’re rubbish, and they probably know that, but so are plenty of other sides. As such, and despite being bottom at Christmas, they’re not doomed. Not quite. Not yet.
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