Things We Think We Think #305

1. The only surprise about the final day of the summer transfer window is that some people were surprised by Hull City’s lack of activity. It should be obvious to everyone by now that beyond merely ensuring that there are enough flesh units to fulfill fixtures, the owners don’t care about the quality of the squad, because doing so would impact how much money can be taken out of the club.

2. Nigel Adkins may be one of the surprised ones though… his quotes about signings went from reiterating the need to do more business (“We are not as strong as we need to be” and “We’re trying to make permanent signings if we can”), to being sanguine about failing to bring relatively inexpensive players in such as Brighton’s Oliver Norwood who had a £1.5m valuation (“They have a fee they don’t want to move on, there’s not a big gulf”), to convincing himself that the loan market might save us and that’s just fine (“We talk about the transfer window finishing, the permanent one, but the loan window is still open for the rest of the month”). Perhaps we should feel for him, but it’s hard to believe he didn’t know what he was letting himself in for.

3. Some people may have groaned when Nigel Adkins said Jordy de Wijs and David Marshall, poor on opening night against Aston Villa, would start at Hillsborough, but there is little value in throwing a new signing adapting to his surroundings and our most experienced goalkeeper under the bus. The votes of confidence paid off too, as both played well at Sheffield Wednesday.

4. City themselves did, well, alright at Hillsborough. When it came, the lead felt meritted, and there were opportunities to extend it. There were good spells against Villa too – only one point may have been taken so far, but in general play we haven’t disgraced ourselves. Now, playing well outside both penalty areas only gets you so far, but in these desperate times, it’s a straw to clutch at.

5. Alas, the lead wasn’t capitalised upon with a second goal. Carrying on from last season’s comical capacity for conceding penalties was maddening (and it was a penalty), and as soon as we coughed up an equaliser then – as per Aston Villa seven days ago – it felt as though there was only one side likely to win it.

6. We just don’t feel as though we’re going to keep many clean sheets this season. That was the case last season, though City’s leakiness was matched with uncommonly effective goalscoring. It’s hard to imagine us scoring enough to combat an equally poor goals-against column this season, so if we don’t tighten up, we’re in trouble. But that takes us to the Allams’ refusal to assemble a proper squad…

7. Sheffield United in the League Cup tomorrow night; there is little imagination in such a draw, but we do have a history (and quite a long one) of some fair old ding-dongs at Bramall Lane. In this more sanitised age, it’s nice to think a match so far back in the chain of importance will still produce an atmosphere and a fine game of football.

8. And we follow that with a home game in the Championship against Blackburn Rovers, who are starting to respect themselves again after a few difficult years, and have a proven manager at this level in Tony Mowbray. A first league win should be more than doable against a side who were in League One last term and have started this campaign with a brace of draws, but there’s only one team evidently on the up in that fixture, and it ain’t us.

9. It’s hard to know if the Head of Marketing and Communication was being hopelessly naive or was wilfully antagonising supporters when they boldly proclaimed the business side of the Club had been ‘Hull City Tigers’ since 2001 on Twitter. We’re hoping it’s the former.

10. They have overseen the reversal of the pointless ‘Hull Tigers Academy’ rebranding on Social Media after all, so hurrah for that.

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