It’s the hope that kills Hull City fans

Back in December, when Hull City were sat rock bottom of the Premier League, any Tigers fan would tell you that relegation was almost guaranteed. Supporters had accepted it. However, a change in management and a subsequent strong start to the New Year gave the Hull City faithful hope that the ‘impossible’ of staying in the top flight could be achieved. But just one month on, after two disappointing results have left the side four points away from safety with only 11 games to play, do the ‘worst prepared team in Premier League history’ still have a chance of avoiding the drop, or was the recent hope instilled by Marco Silva simply ‘new manager bounce’, papering over fundamental cracks? After today’s result, the majority of fans believe the latter.

After starting the season with only 13 fit senior professionals, with no manager after Steve Bruce’s resignation, and following a string of failed takeover bids, Hull City fans really did not expect much from this Premier League campaign. I think it’s also fair to say that this was still the case even after caretaker manager Mike Phelan led us to two miraculous victories over Leicester City and Swansea in our opening two fixtures. Sure enough, the pre-season predictions of a long and hard season for the Tigers appeared to becoming a bleak reality by October, as Phelan’s men slipped into the relegation zone, and as we were constantly reminded by the experts and pundits, Hull City were bottom of the league by Christmas.

Although obviously disappointed and angry about how the owners of our club appeared to be throwing away our shot at the Premier League, no Hull City fan was surprised. Even when the decision was made at the start of January to replace Mike Phelan with the relatively unknown Marco Silva, fans were still convinced we were going to be relegated. ‘The new Remi Garde?’, ‘Hull’s last throw of the dice’, ‘what does he know about Hull? What does he know about the Premier League?” All things said by pundits the week of Silva’s appointment, and if I am honest, I probably agreed with a few of these statements.

However, Silva proved us all wrong in his first two months. Picking up results against Bournemouth, Manchester United and Liverpool, for the first time this season Hull City fans believed we could stay up. That belief has seemingly been killed over our last two poor performances.

Some fans will say I am being dramatic, and that there is lots of football still to be played. This is true – teams have saved themselves from Premier League relegation in fewer than 11 matches, however, what is so worrying, in my eyes at least, is that our last two performances have echoed those of our form between September and Christmas. This is to say, could our recent month and a half of good form be put down to the clichéd ‘new manager bounce’? I hate to say it, but I think so.

Marco Silva’s men were really poor against Leicester today. Despite going a goal up after quarter of an hour when a well-worked counterattack was finished off by Sam Clucus, Leicester were by far the better team and dominated throughout the match. For the first time this season I would argue a number of selected first team players actually let the manager down today, as well. No matter how dire the situation has looked at different points of the season, the squad has appeared to always give 100% of their efforts and fight for the club. Today, this could not be said about the likes of Markovic or Elmohamady on the right flank, both of whom looked borderline disinterested for large phases of the game.

However, as I have said a million times before, if, or should I say when, this club is relegated, it will ultimately not be the fault of either the manager nor our squad of players. Yes both managers this season, and our limited squad of players, have made mistakes at points, but the buck must stop with the club’s owners. From not providing funds for players at the start of the season, to selling our best performer in January, the Allam family deserve to be relegated for the way they have managed Hull City. Any manager in the world would struggle to keep Hull City in the Premier League this season. To use a cricketing analogy made famous by former Chancellor Geoffrey Howe, this season has been, “… like sending our opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find that before the first ball is bowled, their bats have been broken by the team captain”.

As I have said in previous blogs, especially around the time City’s early season good form began to fade, it is looking increasingly likely that our good performances this season, both at the start of the season and the immediate games after Silva’s appointment, were simply built upon team-spirit and adrenaline brought about by a ‘band-of-brothers’ mentality when the club was at a low point, and a resurged belief when the new manager came in.

Like our strong start to the season, Marco Silva’s apparent ‘new manager bounce’ has harboured wildly unrealistic and inflated expectations. The bleak reality is Hull City, the worst prepared team in Premier League history and one of the worst run, deserve to go down. Pundits know it and Hull City fans know it. It’s just a shame that both at the start of the season and in the wake of Marco Silva’s appointment the Hull City faithful, who travel all around the country spending good money to support their team, were given that false hope. As always, it’s not our inevitable relegation that will hurt the most, it’s the false hope we have been sold along the way.