Hull City: If I hadn’t seen such riches…

…I could live with being poor. 

The brilliant, if over-quoted, lyric from James’ “Sit Down” over the years applies to Hull City’s past, present and future as much as anyone. Conventional wisdom suggests that the good times are over. And the future is bleak.

For nearly twenty years, we’ve had it good. Since Adam Pearson picked the locks of Boothferry Park in 2001 we have seen five promotions, three to the Premier League, two at Wembley, we’ve played in the FA Cup Final, qualified for Europe and seen the best players we will ever see pull on black and amber shirts. We’ve gone from bust to boom to bust to boom to gloom and doom to now – whatever now is.

Pearson rescued a “sleeping” not-quite-giant in Division Three in 2001. After two false starts under managers Brian Little and Jan Molby, we moved from Boothferry Park to the shining beacon of the KC Stadium where Peter Taylor assembled a squad of club legends who dragged the club out of the bottom tier and straight through the newly forms League One. We brought Nick bloody Barmby home from exile in Leeds and marched straight into the Championship. Honestly, I never dreamed it would get better than that.

Taylor moved on and after a brief struggle under Phil Parkinson, Pearson appointed Phil Brown as manager and sold the club to Russell Bartlett and Paul Duffen to take us to the next level. Dean Windass came home too while Brown brought and Jay Jay Okocha (which still makes no sense written down) and Caleb Folan became the club’s first million pound signing. From nowhere in the spring of 2008, his side just missed out on automatic promotion to the Championship before winning that play-off final at Wembley. The greatest day in the club’s history.

We started brilliantly in the Premier league and we’re still banging on about those wins at Arsenal, Spurs and Newcastle twelve years later. We didn’t even win at Old Trafford or Anfield but the performances filled us with pride. The joy didn’t last as we all know. Brown and Duffen got ideas above their station, the cost of the signings made to compete in the Premier League bled the club dry and neither Duffen nor Bartlett owned a calculator or a copy of Microsoft Excel. We survived, just, but were relegated the following season with Brown having departed to be replaced by… Iain Dowie. The club returned to the Championship in turmoil. We were haemorrhaging money, selling players to survive and the future was as bleak then as it is now.

Unlike now though, knights in shining hieroglyphics arrived to save us – the Allam family. The family, originally from Egypt, own local business Allam Marine and live in Kirkella. They were local-foreign owners saving the club for the sake of the community. Allegedly. For a couple of years, things went pretty well. They rid the club of some crippling costs and personalities and allowed Nigel Pearson to spend money in building a competitive side in a tough league. When Nigel Pearson left, they appointed Nick Barmby as manager, to their chagrin as it turned out, before sacking him unceremoniously at the end of the season. That was the first warning sign that not all would be rosy under Allam ownership but they appointed Steve Bruce as his replacement and backed him in the transfer market – appeasing most City fans.

Bruce oversaw a glorious four-year period taking us up from the Championship, automatically, at the first time of asking, kept us in the Premier League and through that FA Cup Final appearance in a spirited but losing effort to Arsenal, qualified for the Europa League. We were relegated from the top flight when we really shouldn’t have been close but bounced back via another play-off final win against Sheffield Wednesday.

Almost all the success under Bruce played out against a backdrop of owner/fan division. The controversial attempt to change the club’s name to “Hull Tigers” and subsequent backlash and campaign to keep it caused a rift that still exists seven years on. Despite the ongoing battle, the Allams still backed Bruce, and he was able to succeed, in a fashion, on the pitch. Off it, the Allams refusal to use the club’s name, having lost their appeal to change it, and introduction of an unpopular membership scheme, which axed concession pricing, further disenfranchised many in the fan base.

Following that second play-off final win, the Allams relationship with Bruce broke too. He left in the summer of 2016 and that and the lack of recruitment after Wembley, left the club woefully unprepared for life in the Premier League. Mike Phelan was given the unenviable task of challenging at the top-level. He failed and while we had some respite under the brilliant Marco Silva, he ultimately failed too. Since that relegation, Leonid Slutsky, Nigel Adkins and Grant McCann have all taken on the job of reviving the club in the Championship but as ambition and finances have decreased, so has the quality of the playing squad.

We’ve been spoiled for twenty years. We’ve cheered on Ashbee, Elliott, Burgess, Price, Allsopp, Myhill, Dawson, France, Green, Delaney, Duke, Cort, Fagan, Barmby, Turner, Ricketts, Marney, Pedersen, Brown, Garcia, Okocha, Campbell, Windass, Folan, McShane, Zayatte, Geovanni, Boateng, Cairney, Koren, Rosenior, Fryatt, McLean, Chester, Evans, Dudgeon, Stewart, Brady, Hobbs, Elmohamady, Bruce, Aluko, Faye, Meyler, Boyd, Quinn, Davies, McGregor, Livermore, Huddlestone, Long, Jelavic, Dawson, Hernandez, Diame, Snodgrass, Robertson, Maguire, Jakupovic, Clucas, Odubajo, Grosicki, Rannocchia, Markovic, Niasse, Tymon, Wilson, Clark, Elphick, Bowen and many, many more. They’d be all over a list of the top 50 players in the club’s history along with the stars of the mid-60s and the mid-80s. But what now?

In January, Bowen, Grosicki and Henriksen left. The last players left to have played in the Premier League for City. They leave behind a squad of young and hungry players signed for low fees to develop and sell-on. The few players left who cost multi millions (Dicko, Stewart, Kingsley, Toral) are unlikely to survive this next summer.

Thanks to a reasonable start and a good Autumn, City still sit 7 points above the relegation zone despite a run of 8 league games without a win. The play-off challenge is a distant memory as we’ve picked up 12 points from the last 42 available. Staying in the Championship is far from certain but to be relegated this season would still take a monumentally dreadful effort. But, even if we stay up, what then?

This is a dying club under the Allams’ ownership. It has been for years and years. In all fairness, they have tried to put right some wrongs. They have used the club’s name on the badge and all communication, they’ve brought back concessions, they’ve appointed good people in key roles, they’ve run good events for kids and adult fans, and they’ve stopped saying incendiary things. However, it’s all been fruitless. There are people who will never forgive them. There are plenty more who just won’t support a team that isn’t winning or challenging for success.

So, those of us who are left, a dwindling number but still more than there were when Adam Pearson came to our rescue in 2001, are left to watch what happens. The squad is surely about to get even worse as we try to replace £3 million signings with cheap players of promise from League One or the Scottish Premier League. McCann has a nigh impossible job to keep putting a brave face on the task he faces. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that he succeeds but it’s being made harder and more unlikely by the week.

Tonight is Barnsley at home. In December, it would have been a much fancied three points to close the gap on the play-of places. Now it’s a relegation six-pointer in front of three men and a dog. The stadium is no longer a shining beacon of hope. It’s the soulless bowl most Rugby fans cried about when the capacity was first mooted two decades ago. It’s tired and it’s a miserable place to be.

It fits Hull City AFC in 2020 to a tee.

Jarrod Bowen: The Epilgoue - Star boy. Star man.

There’s nothing better than watching a young player progress from the youth team (old money) or academy into the first team. Seeing that player become a star is even better. Until one day, they outgrow the club and moving on becomes inevitable. If you want to be really dramatic, it’s like watching your child grow up and leave home. You have to let them go but you still close the door behind them and have a little cry.

Jarrod Bowen is what the FA would define as a home-grown Hull City player. Others may question that, given he arrived as a 17 year old having already played senior football and scored in the (then) Conference for Hereford United. Regardless, his subsequent progression into senior football in the Premier League and the Championship has been the result of City’s academy and U18 and U23 staff so he fits the home-grown definition.

When Hereford went bust in 2014, Steve Bruce picked up Bowen on a free transfer. It was a no brainer. He had a mature head on young shoulders, was brave enough to move miles from home and, most crucially, he was a bloody good footballer. A left winger back then with quick feet, an eye for goal and a sweet left foot, he quickly became one of the standout players in the U21 side along with Conor Townsend and Max Clark. He scored goals coming off the left wing and worked hard to improve his game.

He never stopped working. Long after his ascension into the first team, he continued to work hard to improve. His strength, stamina levels, right foot and decision-making all improved ppractically game on game. After his breakthrough season in 2017/18 when he scored 14 goals in the Championship, plenty questioned whether he was a one-season wonder. He then scored 22 goals the following season. He’d become Hull City’s best and most important player, by far.

Bowen was the obvious threat in the side and must have formed most of every opposition’s scouting reports before games. They knew he was the danger with his runs in from the right hand side, ability to arrive in the box at the right time and unerring finishing. Yet stopping him was another matter - he has 16 goals this season and would have been well on course to best last season’s tally and go close to the 25 goals Andy Payton scored in Division 2 in 1990/91.

It’s tough to see him move on - though it has been coming for the better part of two years. This next summer his contract would have one year remaining so he’d definitely have gone then. I’d made peace with that. So while it isn’t a surprise that he is leaving, with no bids going into the final 36 hours of the transfer window – there was hope that he’d see out the season.

I’m delighted for Bowen. He’s more than earned the chance to go and play at the top level and with all the will in the world, it’s not going to happen here any time soon. I make the biggest fee City have received for a home-grown player the £1.1m (eventually) received from Blackburn for Tom Cairney so this will absolutely smash that record. It’s win-win for the player and the club. Just as gutting for fans as it is whenever the best player leaves.

Bowen certainly leaves some memories. The best might just be his first goal for City at Aston Villa on the opening day of the season in 2017. He stole in at the back post to nick an unlikely equaliser then assaulted a few stewards to celebrate with his family in the stands at Villa Park. For all the many goals, the games he dragged City back into, the three points he pinched on his own – that’s the one I’ll always remember him for.

He was the star man playing on our right. All the best, Jarrod.