Hull down: Silva quiet on future
Marco Silva refused to discuss his future as Hull City manager after they were relegated from the Premier League yesterday. But he warned that the club they need to learn from the mistakes made this season.
A 4-0 defeat at Crystal Palace – following on from last weekend’s costly loss to relegated Sunderland – confirmed they would finish in 18th place and return to the Sky Bet Championship, and attention will now inevitably turn to the matter of Silva’s contract, which expires at the end of the season.
The Portuguese, 39, had impressed in keeping them in contention to preserve their Premier League status after he inherited a struggling team with little stability back in January, replacing Mike Phelan.
SIlva has proved himself as a fine manager with the improvement he has overseen, but goals from Wilfried Zaha, Christian Benteke, Luka Milivojevic and Patrick van Aanholt, for Palace, finally took survival beyond them.
“Now is not the moment to talk about the future of the manager,” said Silva, understood to be a target for Southampton should they look to replace Claude Puel.
“It’s about the future of the club.
“I will talk to the board and the chairman first, talking inside the walls of the club. It’s easy (to see) what the club needs to do differently.
“We started to lose in pre-season when we were making our preparation.
“We tried to do many things in January, but it’s not good to be signing six or seven players in January, and losing two. You should be doing that in June, in pre-season. You need to prepare better.
“The most important thing is for the club to understand what they did in a bad way, to prepare. You start to win or lose a season ahead one year in advance. It’s clear we did our best, to try and play at a higher level, and to fight until this moment.
“Now we have to analyse it. I will give the board and the chairman my opinion, about what they need to do differently to make sure this doesn’t happen.
“We’ll talk in the next few days. We will talk before the Tottenham match. We’ll see (if I will be manager next season).
“I have enjoyed these four months in the Premier League. That was one target I had in my career, and we tried to do our best. Now it’s time to be calm and see what is best, first for the future of the club, and also for my career as well.”
His Crystal Palace counterpart, Sam Allardyce, has furthered his reputation as a survival specialist after victory ensured Palace will stay up.
They required only a point, but all three took them up to 13th, and the manager insisted the achievement was greater than when he rescued Bolton, Blackburn, West Ham or, last season, Sunderland.
“I said to myself this would be the hardest one, given the quality of the teams we had to play on the run-in,” said the 62-yearold.
“The next level of the recruitment is critical to the team being more consistent and achieving more in the Premier League rather than a fight against relegation. That’s something we’ll discuss in the future.
“If you’ve got the label, you accept it (as a fire fighter), but building for the future relieves the stress on you. I wouldn’t want to keep fighting relegation at the end of every season. It’s about building for the future.”
Palace were gifted a crucial early opening goal when Hull defender Andrea Ranocchia mistimed the ball to let in Zaha, who slotted under goalkeeper Eldin Jakupovic.