Hull City risk taking huge step backwards as Acun Ilicali faces brutal reality

A little over two years ago, Hull City were 20th in the Championship with four wins from their first 18 games and were perched just a point above the bottom three after a 3-1 home defeat to Middlesbrough. Boro leapfrogged the Tigers with that victory and went on to secure a place in the play-off, losing out to Luton Town in the Wembley final.

Shota Arveladze had been sacked after managing just three wins from his first 10 games, just hours before the game at home to Luton Town. Arveladze, the popular Georgian who had replaced Grant McCann following Acun Ilicali's January 2022 takeover, oversaw a dismal 3-0 loss at Swansea City prior to the September international break and left at the end of that period.

Andy Dawson took charge for eight games before Liam Rosenior was appointed on November 3, just 48 hours before an away trip to Millwall, which saw City have Oscar Estupinan sent off on the stroke of half-time before going on to earn a valuable point in a 0-0 draw at The Den, a result which kick-started their revival.

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Prior to his arrival, City's record read: played 18, won six, drew two and 10 defeats with 21 goals scored and 35 conceded. Their goal difference of minus 14 was, by some distance, the worst in the league.

What relevance, I hear you ask? Well, two years on from Rosenior's arrival, City are lurching back to the point at which they were when the former City defender arrived.

Fast forward 24 months, City are sitting 19th in the Championship under Tim Walter. They've won three of the 15 Championship games so far this season and are only outside the relegation zone on goal difference to Cardiff City. They're struggling for goals and have kept one clean sheet in their 15 games, that coming against Millwall in the third outing of the campaign.

Sunday's 2-1 home defeat to West Brom showed some promise, but it was an all too familiar tale and it left them with four defeats and three draws in their seven games. Everything about them at the moment screams a team in a relegation battle.

Two years since, City were conceding lots of goals; they were struggling to score and, ultimately, were not winning matches. Four of their six wins had come at the MKM Stadium, incidentally.

After last season's flirtation with the play-offs, City have plunged back two years and now need to summon up its survival instincts. And it has to start with shutting the back door.

One clean sheet in 15 games is embarrassing, and it will not win you many games. Walter's cavalier attitude to keeping clean sheets is a growing concern. It's all well and good suggesting they're not that important if your team is capable of scoring more than one goal a game, but his team are not. In their last three games, City have had eight shots on target in total, managing three against Portsmouth and West Brom with just two at Oxford United.

When it comes to clean sheets, City are bottom of the table with Plymouth Argyle the only other team with just the one shut out so far this term. You aren't winning many games with that record, and so it's proved.

In those 15 encounters, City have scored more than one goal in only three games - that trio of wins against Stoke City, Cardiff City and QPR - wins which feel a lifetime ago.

Walter is wedded to his style, but based on the opening 15 games, his team are not set up to keep the ball out of their own net, and at the other end, they do not find it easy to score. Two players capable of doing that in Liam Millar and Mohamed Belloumi are now sidelined with ACL injuries for the rest of the season and beyond.

Owner Acun Ilicali, who made the decision to dispense with Arveladze and then Rosenior, must face up to the reality that under Walter, City are going to find themselves mired in a relegation battle unless something changes.

Walter will not alter his approach and it's tough to make a case for City suddenly turning their form around based on the body of work we've seen so far. Therefore, it will leave Ilicali with a decision he will not want to make, but one he must in the best interests of the club.