Hi everyone, Much of the talk pre-season has been about how newly promoted clubs must prioritise getting points on home territory - on making their home ground a fortress to be feared. This is the subject of my new article in the Premier League Survival series at Hit Row Z. Thanks so much for comments, feedback and debate about the series so far and what the examples included mean for Hull as the club prepares for the new season. The latest article is below. As ever, all comments, feedback etc extremely welcome. Looking forward to hearing your views and getting into some good discussion. http://hitrowz.com/2013/07/05/premier-league-survival-guide-part-4/ Ben
We do indeed need to make the KC a fortress, having said that, I don't think we will replicate the atmosphere of the Cardiff game again anytime soon, and in most other games you could hear a pin drop last season.
This is a funny one for us. In the last few seasons we've probably got as many away wins as home ones. Our away form has been really good, largely due to a good defence whereas at home we often struggle to score enough due to a pretty weak attack. Early last season was the exception when we won a lot of our home games, but when our star attacker Sone Aluko got injured and we lost some other attacking players we started having the same problems with goals again. So yeah normally we're better away. But in the PL we're obviously going to be the weaker side in most of our games so I don't know if we'll be able to snatch those away wins as often as we did in the Championship.
In recent years, before this year, our away form has been the better of the two. I can't see that happening in the premiership, but it will be interesting to see.
It's interesting - as I was looking at the data for this article, Hull City were the only club to recently buck the trend for promoted teams. In your first season back in the PL, it was definitely strong away form that kept you in the division.
KC is home to too many plastics who prefer to wait until a player cocks up and can start groaning rather than cheer them on from the start. Most of the W11/12 need a slap. Or 10.
Depends what constitutes 'good home form'? We'll do well to get 30 points at home, which in my eyes would be good form. So no it wouldn't be enough on its own. We need at least 2 awins and a fair few draws away to stay up.
Our home form will be important next season. As will our away form. I hope that's cleared that one up.
Definitely. People turn up expecting the team to give them energy rather than as it should be where the crowd drives the team on. The Cardiff game was a perfect example of the beneficial effects of a crowd and the atmosphere was electric but also very positive towards the players, encouraging them rather than criticising when they made mistakes. I hope we can carry the atmosphere through and to be honest I think it would be a good idea to have the tacky clapper things that we had for the last game as they made it much more acceptable to make noise and then hopefully the culture around the stadium will change.
I think we should defo have the amber and black cards and the cardboard clappers at every home game to get the crowd going. i would like to nominate someone to take this up with the club....not me of course...weather is far too nice out.
I didn't like the idea of clappers, it sounded naff, but it did work. I'll bring it up with the club.
Have you heard anything about the next FLAG meeting? I haven't heard anything since the last one which was a while now, but that could be due to this 'rotating membership' business. I know you've said you have no interest in it any more but I imagine they'll still ask you.
As you know, I'm not comfortable with this whole on/off thing, but I'll discuss it with Ash when the time comes. I'm sure there hasn't been another meeting, I know almost everyone on the FLAG and half of them contacted me after I wasn't at the last meeting, so if there'd been another one, I'm sure I'd know about it. I want to be involved, I just don't think the current approach is the right way to go about things. I think there should be a core of people at every meeting and they should include someone from AN, CI, HCO, the OSC and me and Rick, as I think that actually represents the thoughts of the majority.
