No prizes for guessing where it all began to go wrong for Tigers
In our latest ‘season so far’ review, chief football writer Stuart Rayner examines how the campaign has turned so dramatically for Hull City.
IT is pretty easy to pinpoint when Hull City’s decline started: January 2, 2020. That was the day English football clubs could start trading players, and the Tigers stopped winning Championship matches.
Having held off the vultures in the summer, it was clear from fairly early in another prolific campaign the Tigers would have a fight on their hands to keep winger Jarrod Bowen during the mid-season transfer window. The consequences have been even worse than anyone could have imagined.
Technically, the window opened on New Year’s Day, but in reality only once the bank holiday was done and dusted could deals be signed off.
As 2020 was rung in, things looked deceptively rosy. Grant McCann’s side won at Hillsborough at a stage of the season where that still looked a decent achievement. Only goal difference kept them outside the play-off places. Of course, Bowen scored the only goal.
After the match, George Honeyman giddily questioned why automatic promotion should not be an ambition. He soon found out.
League One Rotherham United were seen off very narrowly on the weekend, Tom Eaves scoring an FA Cup hat-trick. The Tigers have not won in any competition since.
In the first half of the season, Bowen came across as admirably blinkered as talk of which Premier League club he might be about to join swirled around him. It must have been difficult. Throughout January, McCann stressed Bowen had given no inkling of wanting to move on.
Whether he was distracted or not once the window opened, Bowen’s goal at Sheffield Wednesday would be his last for the club.
If selling him was a setback, the timing was disastrous. It was not the only body blow Hull took that day.
West Ham United did not even wait until the last minute to whisk away the 17-goal winger, completing the deal after the deadline following hours of willhe-won’t-he negotiations.
The £18m fee, potentially rising to £25m, was irrelevant to 2019-20. With the deal in the balance, reinvesting would have been risky and events since have shown the danger of gambling with finances.
Kamil Grosicki left the same day, although at least his move to West Bromwich Albion was wrapped up in the morning.
The Polish right-winger was Hull’s second-best player. Between them, he and Bowen had scored two-thirds of Hull’s league goals at that stage of the Championship campaign, and made more on top.
Signed in the Premier League era on a contract that reflected it (albeit relegation brought a pay cut), this was the last transfer window Grosicki could be sold in before becoming available on a free transfer in the summer, so it was decided keeping him – potentially disgruntled – would be riskier than letting him go.
At least Major League Soccer interest in Leonardo da Silva Lopes, only signed in August, was rebuffed.
Winger Mallik Wilks had already joined on loan as a January reinforcement – along with Martin Samuelsen and Herbie Kane – and Marcus Maddison and James Scott were added once the Grosicki deal was done.
Wilks, unwanted by Barnsley’s Gerhard Struber because of his perceived aversion to tracking back, has hit the ground running, with three goals in amber and black. The hugely-talented Maddison has so far hinted why his career had not progressed beyond League One, but like any signing, should not be judged too early. Kane picked up what looked under the precoronavirus timetable like a season-ending injury after five appearances, Scott suffered his at the start of his first training session.
It is one of the truths of football you can bank on that
when things like having your two best players sold from under you at the last minute go against you, so does everything else.
Often in February and March, McCann’s injury list was into double figures. Eaves, captain Eric Lichaj and centre-backs Jordy de Wijs and Reece Burke were heavyweight absentees. Kevin Stewart and Jon Toral were only just starting to feel their way back after three-month injuries when the season went down with Covid-19.
If it ever gets going again, Hull – two points above the relegation zone – will have an almighty battle on their hands. Context, though, is needed. Whatever else happens at the KCOM Stadium, this is the season when defender Angus MacDonald was diagnosed with early-stage bowel cancer in August, and given the allclear shortly before Christmas. The former Barnsley player’s recovery puts all the misfortune and misery into perspective.
Had the season continued, McCann would have found himself on very thin ice. A 5-1 defeat at relegation rivals Stoke City, who were 4-0 up inside 50 minutes, looked potentially fatal for him when played to the background music of away fans signing: “This is embarrassing!” and: “You’re not fit to wear the shirt!”
The next game, at home to a Charlton Athletic side who could have leapfrogged the Tigers and put them into the relegation zone, might have finished him off.
As it is, he has time to rethink, time for his players to regroup and for many of the walking wounded whose seasons looked over to heal. As with just about everything else right now, it is virtually impossible to say what will happen next.
MacDonald’s recovery puts misfortune into perspective.
Stuart Rayner on Angus MacDonald, who was hit by bowel cancer.