Hull City ace makes relegation threat admission but confidence drawn from key aspect
Hull City will travel to Sunderland on Saturday, looking to take a big step towards securing their Championship safety by inflicting a first home league defeat on the Black Cats.
City's last victory came at Sheffield United last month when Ruben Selles' men were 3-0 winners, and star midfielder Steven Alzate is hoping for a repeat of that performance, and result, which showed the quality at their disposal when the Tigers turn it on.
Unfortunately, those performances and results have not come consistently enough this term, and it's why City find themselves in a perilous situation, one Alzate believes the players can get out of in what he describes as fourteen cup finals between now and the end of the campaign.
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The Colombian, like Joe Gelhardt before him, agrees that there's more than enough quality in the dressing room, but understands the reality of the club's current plight and says it's vital they start picking up points to move away from danger.
"Yes, if we could beat Sunderland 3-0, we'll take it all day long. It's not going to be an easy game," he told Hull Live. "They're having a good season, and whether it's Sunderland or another team in the division, any game in this league can go either way.
"You have got to respect every team you go up against. We need to go into that game believing and knowing what we can do and not think too much about what they're going to do. Hopefully, we will have a good game like we have been doing recently and pick up a result.
"Fourteen cup finals, that's exactly it. Obviously, they've got a massive stadium; our fans will be very important in that game. We need them nice and loud, but in terms of what we're going to do, we need to do what we've been doing in recent weeks. I feel like our away form has been quite good recently, so we could take that to our advantage and pick up a result.
"If you're at the top end, you're thinking of playing in the Premier League the following season, and if you're at the bottom end, you're thinking we could be in League One; it's just reality, I guess."
While the threat of relegation looms large and naturally dominates talk amongst fans and in the media, the players have to try and focus on the job at hand and not allow it to dominate their day-to-day, and Alzate says there's no hint of complacency about the threat of the drop.
"It's something that everyone in the club knows we're going through, but I've mentioned it before, the squad depth that we have, especially the signings we made in January, sometimes things aren't going to click straight away, but 14 games is still a lot of games, so I feel like that should be more than enough for us to get enough wins to get out of this mess," the midfielder explained.
"We all know the situation we're in, but it's something that we're not talking about or overthinking because if you start overthinking these things, then you could start going into a match day overthinking it too much, and then it could affect players' performances and then it could be just chaotic.
"We just need to have that balance of understanding the situation we're in, but then also taking it game by game and just do what we've been doing recently and let the result take care of itself if we do what we're meant to do."
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