I'll let Louise and nige say it Nigel Adkins plays the peacemaker in struggling Hull City’s civil war Last season Hull City were a Premier League club, now the owners want to sell, there is unrest in the stands, a relegation battle and Chelsea away in the FA Cup please log in to view this image Nigel Adkins, who took charge of Hull City in December, is fighting on several fronts to stabilise the Championship strugglers. Photograph: Paul Burrows/Action Images Nigel Adkins knows precisely what is required to knock Chelsea out of the FA Cup. “Magic,” says Hull City’s fifth manager in under two years. “We’re going to need a lot of magic.” He takes the struggling Championship side to Stamford Bridge on Friday night without 12 injured, ineligible or suspended players and, in any case, cannot afford to put the fifth-round tie ahead of attempting to avoid a second successive relegation. Fourth bottom of the second tier, the 2014 finalists – Steve Bruce’s team lost 3-2 after extra time to Arsenal – hover one point above the drop zone. If the tie’s preamble has been overshadowed by the news that the midfielder Ryan Mason has cut his ties with Hull after conceding defeat in a long-running struggle to play again after the skull fracture he suffered at Chelsea, Adkins devoted part of the week to diplomacy. Desperate for unity, the manager is mediating in a civil war between the club’s owners, the Allam family, and the fans. “There’s a lot of unrest,” admits the former Scunthorpe, Southampton, Reading and Sheffield United manager, “but we need togetherness.” It all seems depressingly out of synch with Hull’s regeneration as the 2017 UK city of culture. Quite apart from being described as “an unmitigated, rip-roaring, awe-inspiring, life-enhancing, success” by the Arts Council, those transformative 12 months in the national spotlight provided the city with a £60m-plus economic boost. The club’s relegation from the Premier League represented a rare blot on the landscape, with the stain becoming more unsightly as Leonid Slutsky, the former CSKA Moscow and Russia manager who succeeded Marco Silva last summer, floundered. Adkins arrived in December but results have been slow to improve. Considering his team face vital Championship games at Middlesbrough on Tuesday and at home to Sheffield United on Friday, he could probably do without the Chelsea tie. Yet with Hull receiving £47m in parachute payments this season and the last published accounts – covering 2016-17 – showing a £35m pre-tax profit, supporters wonder why more money has not been invested in the squad. Instead of speculating to accumulate, the club signed 11 players for a total of £16m last summer while offloading 16 – most notably Harry Maguire to Leicester and Sam Clucas to Swansea – for more than £40m. FA Cup final and competed in the Europa League. The trouble is that, along the way, the owners not only alienated Bruce, their most successful manager, who resigned in July 2016, but picked unnecessary fights with fans over an unpopular decision to remove concessions. Following a recent bout of uneasy bridge-building with supporters’ leaders, Ehab Allam, the vice-chairman, looks set to reverse that decision and has also offered an explanation of where the parachute payments have gone. “We’re still paying instalments on transfer fees from last season,” he says. “And our player wage bill is almost £30m.” He also claims much of the £35m profit was swallowed by the need to compensate for a £20m loss the previous year and that, with Hull being paid in instalments for Maguire and co, they are not as cash rich as they might appear. Even so, a key reason driving the lack of spending is the club’s “for sale” status. Ehab and his father, Assem, have wanted out since 2014 when the Football Association vetoed Assem’s idea of renaming it Hull Tigers. Yet, as Newcastle United’s owner, Mike Ashley, and his Sunderland counterpart, Ellis Short, have discovered, finding a buyer is not easy. Moreover, Hull Citycouncil’s ownership of the stadium represents a further complicating factor. “It’s time for us to sell,” Ehab Allam says. “That’s what the fans seem to want. Ideally we’d like to recover what we’ve put into the club.” Although a number of prospective purchasers emerged last season offers fell through and there are now no serious bidders. The board fears “militant” fans who have protested against the Allam family’s stewardship during games are acting as a deterrent. “The disruption isn’t helping,” says Ehab Allam, who has received “intelligence” predicting supporters may interrupt the televised Sheffield United game by blowing referees’ whistles at key moments. “But I’m trying to fix the relationship with the fans.” Harmony is unlikely to be restored if the team drop into League One. “I think we’ll be safe, we have a strong enough squad to survive this season,” Ehab Allam says. “Everybody makes mistakes in life and we could have done certain things a little better but on balance I still think we’ve done a good job.” Adkins is doing his best in vexing circumstances. “We’ve probably got 12 missing for Chelsea,” says a manager likely to be without the influential Kamil Grosicki and Michael Dawson. “It’s a challenging scenario. We’ve got to play players who probably won’t last 90 minutes. Anything’s possible in the FA Cup but we’re going there under no illusions.”
Marshall Clackstone Dawson McDonald Clarke Bowen irvine Stewart Growshitski Evandro Keane I want to see an upset but... Just do us proud boys. 3-1
"Everybody makes mistakes in life and we could have done certain things a little better but on balance I still think we've done a good job". **** me
I wasnt to go but its a weekend away with the lads. 5th Round innit. Scoreline Chelsea 7 v 0 Hull City AFC
Hope not. In over 50 years of supporting City can only recall having 7 put past us twice, Brentford in 1980 and West Ham in 1991. Don't want a third occasion.
FA Cup can go **** itself. Cup of the people? Don't make me laugh. Does anyone else care about the plight of our club? Does the FA? Do they ****. I expect us to get humiliated tomorrow night, and it's the fault of Ehab, but as ever, he won't accept the blame. **** this game.
What protest during games ? One protest in the game against Forest ? Also what did the club do for the City of Culture ? It was left to a fan , Les Motherby to actually do something
Why should they give a **** about our club any more than other clubs they haven't given a **** about?
Yep I've asked this loads of times when posters have said city should be doing summat. The organisers made it clear they didn't want sport to be centre stage at all.
No. They switched to a Friday because they were worried about thousands of City fans like Babs and her members going down, running amok and chasing the Chelsea lot all over. Humberside Police Intelligence Unit told them what a tough job it was controlling City fans.
I was going to go, run amok and get on the telly. But if Babs and co are going down I won't bother, I'll leave it to the hardcore nutters.
