Say goodbye to Hull City, who have been relegated from Premier League

It probably won’t be much consolation to anybody involved, but it’s fairly remarkable that Hull City managed to put off relegation for this long. Sunday’s 4-0 defeat to Crystal Palace was by turns unfortunate and plucky, before ending in a hammering. But it was also game 37 of 38. So they gave it a decent crack.

After all, this is a club that won promotion through the playoffs and then, over the summer, lost their manager, picked up several serious injuries, sold some important squad members, and at one point looked like they might not have enough players to field a full team.

This was eventually resolved by a giant shopping splurge in the last few days of the transfer window, which is never a good sign. And this wasn’t just a strange summer. The club’s owners have spent the last few years alternately alienating and enraging their fan base, most notoriously with their failed attempt to change the club’s name to something more exciting-sounding.

This was not a happy football club.

So much so, in fact, that when they began their campaign with two consecutive victories, it felt nothing like a promise that things might actually be OK. More like a blip, a brief, and temporary glitch in reality. And it was: A run of six straight defeats in September and October sent Hull down into the bottom three; by Christmastime, they were bottom.

Bottom they likely would have stayed, but for two hope-extending occurrences. The first is that Hull were not alone in their misery: Sunderland, Middlesbrough, and Swansea were all determined to get in on the relegation action. Misery loves company, and relegation-bound teams need competition.

The second was the appointment of Marco Silva as manager. This was greeted by the more chauvinistic corners of the English media as an error not just of judgement but of patriotism. What could this outsider, with his “experience” in such places as “Greece” and “Portugal,” wherever the hell they are, possibly hope to understand about the honest, gritty, English muck of a Premier League relegation battle? Why wasn’t the job given to somebody proper, like Tim Sherwood, or Tim Sherwood, or possibly Tim Sherwood?

It turned out to be one of the better decisions of the season from any club, and it nearly worked. Before Silva took over, Hull had taken 13 points from 20 games, which is awful. Since he arrived, they’ve taken 21 from 17. Stretch that latter pattern out over a season — this may not be scientifically rigorous, but it’s certainly indicative — and you’re looking at an unspectacular but relatively comfortable mid-table finish. Given the summer, given the start, and given the sales of Jake Livermore and Robert Snodgrass (still the club’s top scorer) and a serious injury to Ryan Mason early in January, you’re looking at a miracle.

Well, almost.

Despite victories over fellow strugglers Middlesbrough and Swansea and, a deeply amusing win at Anfield, Silva’s rejuvenated and refreshed players couldn’t quite squeeze enough out of the second half of the season to compensate for the miserable first. Reports suggest that Silva has a break clause in the case of relegation, and he certainly won’t lack for suitors. Meanwhile, a number of the players who’ve impressed over the back end of the season, including Oumar Niasse and Lazar Markovic, are only at the club on loan.

Ultimately, Hull have taken an unpredictable path to a predictable outcome. That they would end the season relegated, and in something of a state, was almost certain; that they nearly managed to escape their certain fate was admirable. Whether they’ll be back again any time soon is doubtful. But on the plus side, at least much of this season wasn’t wasted arguing about whether a silly man should be allowed to change the name of a football club to the Orange-Black Thunder Tigers Roar! Roar! Roar! Small mercies.