Hull City start
the 2015/16 Championship season without having lifted the gloom left by May’s
needless relegation.
In an era where
football managers enjoy less job security than Greek stockbrokers, Steve Bruce
can consider himself particularly lucky to still be in a job. For their many
flaws, the support afforded Bruce by the Allams has always been first class.
Their decision to continue to back the manager after relegation is admiral and
given Bruce’s record in his last few spells in the second tier is probably just
about the right one.
Bruce should be
walking on egg shells though. He was massively culpable for relegation with his
erratic signing policy. Additions all came at a huge cost and with each one the
togetherness in the dressing room, once lauded by Bruce, was eroded. He must
now deliver another team capable of challenging at the top end of the table.
The fall-out
from relegation has been felt time and again since the end of the season with
the loss of some outstanding personalities. Amongst those expected to be
released at the end of their contracts where the surprising names of Paul
McShane and Liam Rosenior. Bruce blamed a need to cut the budget for their
exits but it remains a baffling decision. Not only because of their ability on
the pitch but their influence off it.
Stephen Quinn
and Tom Ince also left the club, for Reading and Derby respectively, despite
efforts to keep them. Bruce was upset that Ince was allowed to leave because a
clause was inserted into his loan deal with The Rams last season but the
manager’s attitude to both players is as responsible as anything for them seeking
pastures new. Neither player was made to feel important when the club was in
the Premier League. Bruce preferred others then.
The saddest
departures have been those of James Chester (WBA £8m) and Robbie Brady (Norwich
£7m). The club have done well to recoup good fees for players who deserve to be
playing in the Premier League and had contracts running out but the need to
sell players of their quality with years ahead of them at the top level just
hammers home how costly the carelessness of last season was.
Despite “the
exodus” bringing in close to £20m in transfer fees there is still some very
obvious belt-tightening going on. Ehab Allam recently spoke of his concerns
over the financial fair play rules so even with the £24m parachute payments on
top of the sales – the owners are obviously still worried about meeting the
costs over the course of the season.
As a result,
player recruitment was very slow to start. In spite of claims from both manager
and owners that bouncing back into the Premier League was the target, balancing
the books has been the very clear priority. Four new players eventually arrived.
Sam Clucas joined from Chesterfield for about £1.3m. He’s a very sensible signing
who could fill the gap left by Brady for a modest outlay. He’s only going to
get better and has the attitude and work rate that Bruce’s original success
here was built on.
Ryan Taylor is
the most dubious of the signings so far. He’s almost thirty-one years old and
has missed nearly three years of football with two serious knee injuries. He
has quality and is, by all accounts, a good guy but he’s an odd signing from a
club who couldn’t afford to keep Liam Rosenior.
Bruce has also
signed defender/defensive midfielder Issac Hayden and striker Chuba Akpom on
loan from Arsenal. They are just and almost twenty. Both are talented young
players with a great footballing education who could excel in the Championship
with good management.
Pre-season has
been fairly low key for The Tigers. Because of the constant changes in personnel
in the squad, it’s never felt like a manager bedding in a team but more a case
of the players just playing to be ready to start the season – for us or someone
else. It has seen City line-up with a 4-4-2 formation in most games, a bit of a
departure from Bruce’s favoured 3-5-2. We still have the players to effectively
play the wing-back system so it looks like it’s born out of desire rather than
necessity.
If nothing else,
it will be nice to see Bruce putting together a “Plan B” that has been sorely
missing in the past two seasons. Both systems are a little rigid though. We
have the players to effectively play 4-2-3-1 with attacking full-backs and
dynamic players supporting a lone front man. I do think that would make the
best use of the players at Bruce’s disposal.
The defence looks
the strongest unit in the squad (perhaps with the not-so-small exception of the
goalkeepers) as it has been since Bruce arrived in 2012. Even with the losses
of Chester, McShane and Rosenior, we retain three good centre-halves alongside Michael
Dawson who will be an excellent leader. Bruce also has two attacking full backs
in Ahmed Elmohamady and Andy Robertson and the experience of Ryan Taylor to
call on. In terms of squad depth, he’s desperately short of another left back.
Midfield was a
real problem area last season with the ex-Tottenham duo of Tom Huddlestone and
Jake Livermore producing performances of the class and poise of the average Deal Or No Deal contestant. Livermore’s
future is now “up in the air” to say the least as the club still await news of
his punishment after a failed drug test. The same can be said of long term
injury absentees Robert Snodgrass and Mohamed Diame. They are expected back at
some point in the Autumn but when they’ll be back to 100% and ready for a bruising
Championship campaign is anyone’s guess? At least there is no chance of anyone
buying them so every cloud and all that…
Unless Tom
Huddlestone finds the form and fitness that has utterly deserted him in the
last eighteen months then the pressure is going to fall onto the shoulders of
the exuberant David Meyler and young Hayden. Neither has Huddlestone’s class in
possession but both probably have grandmothers who could out-run him at the
moment.
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| (C) Hull Daily Mail |
On to Steve Bruce’s favourite topic: Strikers. In his time in Hull he’s
specialised in buying front players who don’t score goals. The only exceptions
to that rule are players who do know how to hit a cow’s arse with a banjo but
are always injured like Sone Aluko in 2012/13 and Nikica Jelavic last year.
Aluko has struggled
for two years in the Premier League to make the team and to be effective once
he has but he’s shown some signs that he may well be back to the sort of form
that made him the club’s key player before he was injured in late 2012. That is
definitely important because at the moment Aluko and Chuba Akpom are the only
forwards guaranteed to be at the KC Stadium in Spetember.
It looks set to
be another busy August for the manager and owners. Not only are there five
league games and a League Cup tie at Accrington to negotiate but also the
challenge of selling (or keeping?) three strikers in Jelavic, Dame N’Doye and
Abel Hernandez and the need to replenish a soon-to-be very depleted squad.
City have had
several bids rejected for Brentford striker Andre Gray, have a deal done that
they’re stalling on for his team mate Moses Odubajo and seemingly remain
interested in Scotland winger Shaun Maloney – currently of Chicago Fire in the
MLS. They may not be the only additions just as the attacking trio may not be
the only departures. It promises to be a hectic month and one can only pray
that we go about it with some of the sense that was completely missing a year
ago when our business resembled a pie-eyed lottery winner at the Harrods sale.
City were
favourites for promotion earlier in the summer but have slipped below Derby
County and Middlesbrough in the markets now. That seems more than fair as Derby
have added strength to an already impressive unit while Boro, who went mighty
close in May, have spent big on Stewart Downing. He’s by far the best player in
the league this season.
Wolves have
plenty of momentum after a strong finish to last season, QPR have invested in
their squad again, Burnley have retained the majority of the players who got
them promoted two years ago, Leeds and Sheffield Wednesday are showing ambition
and Mick McCarthy continues to over-achieve at Ipswich.
The pot of gold
at the end of the rainbow is monumental this season and it’s created the most
competitive Championship I can remember. Hull City have not rebuilt a squad
that looks capable of automatic promotion. The play-offs are possible, perhaps
even probable but it will take something special before Tuesday September 1st
for that “favourites” tag to look anything other than silly.
Hull City
finishing position? Rick predicts 6th.
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