HULL NEED TO BREAK CYCLE
Tigers must strive to regroup – and quickly – in an unforgiving League 1
HULL CITY could be up against one of the most powerful forces in football next season: apathy.
The owners appear apathetic (though some will ask if that is spelt with a silent ‘a’) and the crowds spiralling downwards on the Allam family’s watch will surely tumble again when the KCOM Stadium reopens fully to spectators in League One.
It is not so much anger that rots away at fallen football clubs, it is indifference.
Ever since Assem Allam infamously failed to change their name to Hull Tigers in 2014, disillusionment between the fans and their club has grown. With the exception of 2016-17, when they last played in the Premier League and reached the League Cup semi-finals, attendances have fallen every year since.
Only Wigan Athletic and Blackburn Rovers filled a smaller proportion of their Championship seats in 2019-20.
Some relegation-threatened clubs emerged from the coronavirus lockdown full of fight – Middlesbrough, Luton Town and Stoke City won half their eight games, Barnsley three. Hull picked up just four points and how they won at Middlesbrough is a mystery.
After gathering those points in a matter of days to raise hopes, the toothless Tigers lost their last six in a row. At Wigan they conceded five goals in 20 minutes, and lost 8-0 over the 90. It was embarrassing.
League One is no place for a club feeling sorry for itself.
The additions of Hull, Wigan (barring a successful appeal against their 12-point deduction today), Charlton Athletic and Swindon Town takes the number of ex-Premier League sides to eight. Sunderland, 2014 League Cup finalists, have spent the last two years discovering how unforgiving it can be for a big club. Ipswich Town, fifth in the 200001 top division, were 10th in last year’s third tier, even with a manager in Paul Lambert who knows the course and distance.
Sheffield United had six years in League One, Leeds United three. Having played in an FA Cup final and Europe six years ago only guarantees teams will be even more desperate to bloody Hull’s nose.
Like Rotherham United, Wigan have found it an easy division to get out of, but unfortunately the same has been true of the Championship for them. Next season will be the Latics’ third spell in
League One since winning the 2013 FA Cup.
The biggest concern for Hull is how keen the Allams are to do something about it.
Lincoln City manager Michael Appleton has predicted the division’s big clubs will “splash the cash” this summer, but it would be out of character for their frugal owners if Hull act like one.
Perhaps they will realise their hopes of getting anything like their asking price for a club they have wanted rid of for years will be fainter still in League One but it did not seem to dawn on them in June when they failed to agree new contracts with captain Eric Lichaj and vice-captain Jackson Irvine despite dragging themselves into a relegation battle by selling Jarrod Bowen and Kamil Grosicki.
Hull’s has been a death by a thousand cuts and the closest thing to a glimmer of light is that their recruitment policy has already delivered a League One squad and coach. If players looked out of their depth often sampling second-tier football for the first time last season, there are no such excuses this.
But can they show the hunger for the fight so conspicuously absent in the run-in?
The failure to agree wage cuts during lockdown suggests the over-riding feeling between players and their paymasters was anything but apathetic and keeping and motivating their best players might not be easy.
In reality, though, there are few assets left to sell as Hull add the price of relegation (at Barnsley it was about £6m-7m two years ago) to the considerable cost of covid.
Leonardo Da Silva Lopes was in demand in January and will probably move on but George Long, Jordy De Wijs and Reece Burke built good reputations in the first half of the season only to use most of their credit as confidence eroded. All three were dropped after negligible resistance at Wigan.
George Honeyman was one of the few to show fight that evening but his CV says he has only had one season in senior football that did not end in relegation – and that was spent failing to get out of League One with Sunderland.
Coach Grant McCann appears to have ridden out the storm. Some will put that down to Allam apathy, others will argue sacking him would be punishment for the owners’ mistakes. He will certainly be able to call on a shallower pool of patience than most.
His brief will be to use his League One contacts to build a young, vibrant and cheap squad the public can unite behind to support the team, not the regime. Academy products such as Keane Lewis-Potter with first-team potential must be given a leg-up.
Take away their stadium, and Hull look and feel like a League One club. Those on the field must not resign themselves to it if the men holding the purse strings do little to change that.
Hull’s has been a death by a thousand cuts.
Stuart Rayner