Hull City dropped out of the Premier League yesterday ending our second two season spell in the top flight. This relegation doesn’t feel as devastating as the first one did. The club isn’t in the same catastrophic financial position – as far as I know – and the squad is a blend of players who are more than worth keeping and some who have sell-on value and potential suitors. While relegation wasn’t heart-breaking, it was utterly needless and was caused by under-achievement on the playing and management side. I’ve picked out the five lessons I think the club must learn in order to bounce back from the Championship and to make a better fist of the Premier League if we are lucky enough to do so. I am happy to see Steve Bruce remain as manager despite the mistakes that have been made. He is a thoroughly decent man who is honest enough to know that he’s made errors and is determined to make up for them. Without sweeping changes throughout the football side and a whole new approach – we are not going to find a better manager in the Championship than Steve Bruce. For that reason, he should get the first shot at turning things around but he needs to address the problems that have contributed to relegation. 1. Protect the team ethic Steve Bruce’s promotion winning side was built on togetherness in the dressing room - excellent professionals who worked hard for each other. While our football was neat, it wasn’t a team blessed with flair but one that won games the hard way. On winning promotion, Bruce set out to bring in players who had Premier League experience but were solid professionals. Even in the January transfer window when he splashed out on two strikers in Shane Long and Nikica Jelavic – he signed players who fit the team ethic he’d instigated. Unfortunately the care taken to foster a fine team spirit was abandoned in the summer of 2014. Each big money signing on huge wages pushed out of joint the nose of Bruce’s established workhorses. Meanwhile an excellent professional in George Boyd was allowed to leave. The carelessness became recklessness on September 1st when Bruce went out and panic bought Abel Hernadez for almost £10m, Mo Diame, Gaston Ramirez and the poisonous Hatem Ben Arfa. I admit that last opinion is spouted with the benefit of hindsight. Back in September, I was wetting my knickers with everyone else at the prospect of Steve Bruce dragging the best out of these lost souls. The players signed to help take the club two steps forward instead dragged it back several. Bruce is fortunate that it hasn’t cost him his job. 2. Avoid training ground woes I have no idea what we do in training. That isn’t ignorance or flippancy. It’s the result of watching the team make the same mistakes time after time while failing to address issues like poor set piece delivery and an inability to create and take chances. Bruce has had two assistant managers, Steve Agnew and Mike Phelan, and nothing has changed under either. Can you name a player who has progressed since joining the club? Bruce has a knack for getting performances out of players who are under-achieving but his staff does not improve players. Players with promise like Jake Livermore, Tom Ince and Andy Robertson have regressed since we signed them. Another serious issue is the amount of injuries we’ve suffered. It’s hard to think of a player who hasn’t had a spell on the sidelines in the past three seasons while some have suffered time and again. We are riddled with muscular injuries and we rush players back into the fold before they are ready. The club is hampered by the facilities available at the training ground, which you have to make allowances for - it’s a long standing problem, but must strive to improve the personnel on the coaching and physiotherapy side. 3. Scouting - Be prepared! There are many areas in which Hull City is well short of being a Premier League club. That is understandable given that we have only been one for four of our one hundred and eleven year existence and that only ten years ago we were just getting out of League One for the first time in almost fifteen years. One important area is scouting. The scouting setup at the club is rudimentary. There have been steps taken to improve it but it is still way behind most others. Many signings in the past three years have been players known to the manager (or well known to everyone) who have often been acquired for excessive transfer fees because our options are limited. When we’ve strayed from that formula – the results have been poor. Nick Proschwitz and Abel Hernandez have been expensive failures. Yannick Sagbo and Fathi were cheap gambles but also struggled. Gedo was reasonably successful the first time and Dame N’Doye – who Bruce says he’s watched for several years – looked a good fit for the Premier League. More responsibility has to be taken in the future to ensure that we get value for money in the market. Paying top dollar for established players isn’t sustainable as an only option. 4. Be positive Both of City’s spells in the Premier League have started well and seen the club win friends playing attacking football. Both ended with managers setting up only to try desperately to avoid defeat. Numerous times this season, fans left games away from wondering why they’d bothered turning up when the team hadn’t. Not just in the level of performance but the lack of intent. It’s an approach that is utterly senseless as well as negative. We have struggled to score goals for five seasons. It’s been an Achilles heel for a long time under three managers. As a consequence, if we concede a goal, we very rarely get anything from the game. That makes going into games hoping for a nil-nil draw a ridiculous risk. The league table mid-way through the season also showed the lack of value in picking up too many draws anyway. Going out to win games is the only way to approach the Premier League. You’ll lose more than you win but you’ll win more than three other teams. 5. Value the support I’m not going to blame off the field dramas for our failure. We have been relegated because the manager and the players have not done their jobs to the best of their abilities. However it hasn’t been as much fun as it should have been to follow a team hitting new heights in winning automatic promotion, reaching an FA Cup Final and qualifying for Europe because everything has been built on a backdrop of negativity. I don’t want to rant about the specific issues. Maybe some other time! But the attempted name change, the raising of disabled concessionary prices (to raise an amount of money that wouldn’t pay our worst player for a week), the eviction of sports clubs from a community sports venue, refusing to spend the Premier League’s ASI (Away Supporters Initiative) fund on our own supporters and a number of minor misdemeanours has caused consternation amongst fans. Some fans have felt alienated and left or reduced their input into the club while those left behind are divided. City fans booing City fans for singing a City song has to be one of the saddest things I’ve seen from our support. Hull City is incredibly important to the City and the community. Not only is a successful Hull City a force for economic improvement but it puts the City on the map. That half of the column inches dedicated to the club on a national (and international) level in the past two years have been dedicated to a ridiculous idea born out of a disagreement between a spiteful multi-millionaire and a comatose local council has been a massive waste. What should have been a golden period has and continues to be soured by off-field nonsense. While I won’t blame that for the club’s relegation – it has done us no good whatsoever. When relegation was confirmed after a 0-0 draw with Manchester United, 23,000 Hull City fans stayed to the end and as one, rose to appreciate and console the players despite everything. It was a show of immense class that made be proud to be part of the club and for which Steve Bruce offered his heart felt gratitude to a “unique” set of supporters. That support should be embraced and valued by the people in charge of the club regardless of how much of the revenue they make up. More than anything on this list – I hope that is a lesson that can be learned from our recent experiences. http://boothferrytowembley.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/five-lessons-hull-city-can-learn-from.html
3 points for a win. Earlier in the season there was more attack with Diame's first spell in the side. Points were lost at the end of games not at the beginning, so the problem was smaller and needed less adjustment.
One of the commentators on the Man U match said that Hull City had only scored in the first 15 minutes in 3% of their total games. The problem, all season, was scoring goals - we couldn't and didn't! There is a lot to be done next season and I agree with OLM that cohesion in the side has to be re-instated. There is no room for prima-donna's.
we didn't score enough goals for a number of reasons - negative tactics, playing too deep, huge gaps between midfield and the forwards, losing the ball and giving it away too cheaply, not enough crosses into the box going to our players, inability to shoot when there's a half chance, poor signings of strikers - massive rebuild required
Crumbs of comfort...... We went down with a GD of -18 which is low for a relegated team. We didn't concede more then 3 goals in a game which is also rare for a relegated team.
Well yeh I said 'Points were lost at the end of games not at the beginning' meaning for that small part of the season I was referring to. Most of the season the team went back into its shell and lost games pretty quickly as the tactics meant they were unlikely to be able to fight back from going down very often. Also as I've said before here a good goal difference isn't that much help in getting you out of a relegation battle, it's more a desperate hope that if you remain down there it might just make that small difference at the end.
Good article but I can't get my head round this negativity around Andy Robertson's so-called "slump".
Agreed, all that happened to Robertson was he was too attacking and apparently too young, needing protecting by not being played at all. He's far from the finished product but he never went stale, he had bad games as all players do but he was always exciting and looking to attack.
That's Robertson summed up perfectly - he's had a couple of nightmare games defensively but I'm sure he'll learnt from them, Scottish Premiership strikers are mostly Championship/L1 rejects, and not Premiership quality.
From Europe to the Championship, Philip Buckingham asks how Hull City surrendered to relegation. RELEGATION might have been a train chugging down the tracks these past few weeks but its inevitable arrival at the KC Stadium was no easier to take on Sunday evening. As the last of the Premier League's glamour rolled out of town on board the Manchester United team coach, the sense of deflation was palpable at every turn. Glum supporters milled around the ground, unwilling to leave the scene of City's last stand, while inside Steve Bruce cut an exhausted and defeated figure as he began the post-mortem he had hoped to avoid. Players were hurting, too. James Chester spoke of being "haunted" by the day for the remainder of his career. Even Ahmed Elmohamady, the most upbeat figure in the City dressing room, struggled to muster a smile as he waded through well-wishers outside. The pain will soon subside as plans are made to start afresh in the Championship but the stain of regret will not be shifted easily. Twelve months after reaching the FA Cup final and European football, the Tigers somehow find themselves contemplating trips to Rotherham and MK Dons all over again next season. A place in the Premier League has been squandered for the second time in five years but, unlike 2009-10 and the empire built on wet sand, this has felt so much more avoidable. A squad assembled at a rough cost of £60m, containing no fewer than 23 full internationals, should have had enough to avoid the ignominy of relegation. Surely. And therein lies the frustration. There have been injuries and late goals to create a catalogue of misfortune but only the misguided would pretend City did enough to warrant a third straight season in the Premier League. This season will be best remembered as the story of a team that fatally lost its identity. The blood, sweat and defiance that carried the club out of the Championship and twice down Wembley Way in last year's historic FA Cup adventure was lost beneath the emperor's new clothes. Not only did last summer's recruitment drive bring more failures than successes, but also it began dismantling a tight band of brothers inside the City dressing room. No one complained when Hatem Ben Arfa replaced George Boyd or when Gaston Ramirez filled the hole left by Robert Koren. And why would they? The ambition shown last summer could only be applauded. But all that glitters, we have been reminded, is not always gold. Ben Arfa was an unmitigated disaster, Ramirez marginally better. The £10m spend on Abel Hernandez has also turned out to be rotten business. Mohamed Diame, through no fault of his own, has been another big earner that has failed to take City to the next level. Perhaps only Michael Dawson and Andy Robertson have genuinely come good of the dozen players signed in the last 12 months. Robert Snodgrass, Tom Ince and Harry Maguire may all prove to be wise acquisitions in time, while a move for Dame N'Doye can still be justified, but that is a conversion rate Bruce knows has cost him dearly. It showed in the final months of the campaign. As if to accept the failings of his ambition, Bruce ended the season with a starting XI that included six of his promotion-winning side. The City boss returned to what he knew and trusted but by then it was too late. The hole dug was too deep. City aimed for the stars last summer but never truly created a team as impressive as what they already had. The injury problems suffered by Snodgrass, Diame and Nikica Jelavic were an awful hindrance, that cannot be denied, but there has always been a spark missing this season. The character and hunger has never felt the same. Neither have some of Bruce's old favourites. Allan McGregor, Curtis Davies, Tom Huddlestone and Jake Livermore all formed the spine of City's successes in 2013-14 but never came close to hitting those standards again. McGregor and Davies were both axed for their loss of form, while Huddlestone and Livermore were a shadow of the midfielders that played with such a point to prove in their debut seasons. Livermore, currently suspended for a failed drugs test, has been Bruce's biggest disappointment of all. Those underachieving stars, dipping far below their performances of last season, capture a sense of complacency that has run through City's season. Call it a second-season syndrome if you wish, but too many have suffered from its ills. City, you can't help but conclude, thought they had cracked it when beginning this season with a Europa League tie away to AS Trencin in Slovakia. Back in November when the rot first began to set in, Dawson suggested relegation had not even been considered within a City dressing room thinking big. Bullish talk it might have been, but that summed up an imprudent belief that a top-half finish felt just as likely as a spot in the bottom three. Only when things really took a turn for the worse in late January did it begin to sink in that City were in the mire. By that point, escaping the scrap is far harder than joining it, and so it proved. The 10th relegation in the club's history must surely rank as the most wasteful and raises all manner of questions for what comes next. Some will inevitably suggest Bruce has run his race at the KC but the backing he received late in the 0-0 draw with Manchester United, with relegation confirmed by Newcastle's win, would suggest the vast majority do not want a summer change. And with good reason. The last three times Bruce was a manager in the Championship, he ended those seasons with promotion. He knows the best routes out of that demanding division and still has enough credit banked up to deserve a fourth campaign in charge. Bruce began this season by suggesting it would be his most difficult yet and so it has proved. Reshaped expectations brought fresh demands but this remains a squad that has never really conquered its limitations. The failure to score in 17 of the last 30 Premier League games is a damning statistic. Now comes the rebuilding to go again. Plenty won't be salivating about playing in the Championship. Others will be sold to balance the books no longer propped up by the Premier League riches. City can yet respond in 2015-16 with a promotion challenge but you suspect it will need every inch of that old identity back. http://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/#SBetIQJhqchrm5vZ.99
It's not all bad though, let's be fair at least one player ended with a positive result...Jake Livermore.
I don't even think he's had bad games. He's an exciting attacking fullback which makes people think he's worse defensively than he really is. Like most of our defenders, he's barely let us down all season.
If Bruce takes away 1 thing from this fiasco, it should be you don't pick the same team players and tactics against completely different teams like Burnley and Arsenal, as he did at the end of this season. He should learn from the new young Norwich manager, who inherited a team outside the play offs and transformed them to win at Wembley yesterday and get promoted back to the Premier League in less than 6 months. He scouts the opposition and plays the right players and tactics to beat each team. He also does not have favourites and a naughty step. He would not have continued to play Huddlestone and Livermore after each woeful performance. Maybe Bruce is a dinosaur and we need fresh ideas.
1) dont change the clubs name 2) dont put prices up 3) respect your fans 4) dont expect a ground for nil pounds 5) repeat 1-4
