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Some players in our clubs history just seem to resonate with the fanbase, so when I offered up a poll for my latest “The boy was a larker” series, deep down I knew who was going to win. Stephen Quinn was a cracking footballer, Mo Diame delivered for us in one of the biggest games we’ve ever played in, Jay Jay’s cameo for us was wonderful, but it was never really in doubt. There’s simply an X factor that Abel had that is even greater than his contributions were for the club.

That did make me think of other cases. Billy Whitehurst for example, only ever really had one prolific season for us in 1984-85, where he scored 20 league goals, double his previous best and by the time he returned to the club three years after leaving, he was very much there to hold the ball up for others, whilst Geovanni might have had an even shorter streak, really in the first half of the 2008-9 season, although he’d still flash talent in the following games, Harry Maguire was another player that frankly didn’t really fit in until Marco Silva made him the pivotal part of a back 3 and again his excellent run was in reality… months.

Just like Billy, Geo and Harry though, what made Abel iconic and stand out from the crowd is personality and his relationship with the crowd. Geo recently said he preferred playing for City than Barcelona, in what might have been the least expected quote of all time about this club, but when it came down to the nitty gritty, he nailed it in this quote “The club really got under my skin. It was a dream for me. Those may have been the best days of my life as a footballer.” Love Hull City and it loves you back, all of the above players have played for other clubs but whilst they were here they loved it and so we loved them back even more.

Abel didn’t have the most auspicious start to his time at the club and in his first season he found the adjustment from Serie A to the English game hard, maybe dare I say a bit too physical? He was in and out of the team, a team that as we know is the greatest and most talented we’ve ever had, but still went down anyway (please note this current fanbase moaning about last season 2014-15 WAS THE underachieving team of all time in this City)

There were flashes in that season, for example the goal that I still think is perhaps our greatest team goal ever scored at Arsenal that season as the wet lettuce, excuse making, also ran, runners up weren’t allowed to touch the ball from the kick off to the second half as City carved them open and Abel towered above Monreal to bury a header into the attention seeking babies goal. I’m sure somebody far more tech savvy can find a link, to just that goal that does it justice. In the meantime here’s all 39 of his goals for us in one link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_Y5nISf3QE

That season slipped away from us and Abel uncharacteristically twatted perma-injured wage stealer Phil Jones in the last game of the season as a 0-0 draw with Manyoo wasn’t enough to save us from the drop. This meant he wouldn’t play in the opening three games of next season. However in retrospect it might have actually been a silver lining around our cloud, as when fully hitting the ground running that season, he may have been more difficult to keep and by the time he was back Jelavic and N’doiye had departed.

In 2015-16 he was often unplayable, from the moment he equalised at Charlton in his first game after his ban (more on that later) until the play off run he was too quick, too savvy, too clever and just too damned good to cope with for opposition players. 22 goals in all competitions and countless highlights, perhaps my favourite amongst these is when he essentially retires Burnley’s Michael Duff who is turned inside out by the Uruguayan who then whips a ball around him into the the corner before you can say “I’ll take my PFA retirement please”.

For me he was the best striker in the division that year…. he always did score a wide variety of types of goal too, he could beat a high line and slot in, he could cut in from wide, he had a header in his locker and he didn’t care one bit if it was a tap in from 2 yards out. Abel was mustard, all season and after a nervy and back foot start in the play off semi final at Derby, he was the one that lit the touch paper. As the ball broke to him in the midfield and after a good touch he took out the paintbrush and just passed it past Scott Carson for the opener.

In forty five years of being a city fan the scenes in the away end that day were right up there, and Abel was in the thick of it. Like a few South American lads, Abel liked a celebration and after scoring that opener he sprints at the delirious City contingent, jumps in the air and military salutes us, I’d still have that in a top five of most iconic celebrations I’ve witnessed following this club. Flares go off, the noise was deafening. What. A. Day. Abel loved it and we loved him all the more for it. His delight at scoring was simply infectious, going back to the Charlton goal, he simply dives into the away end and goes mental with the fans, he was one of us and that connection was always there.

In truth his 8 goals in around 50 appearances in the Premier League was a little disappointing, he suffered with injuries in his second go at the top league and you felt that if he’d have got a run after Silva came in during the spring run in, it might have just kept up out of the bottom three. However again he did like a big moment, none better than the double bicycle kick with Adama Diomande as City beat the defending premier league champions with the squad depth of a netball team. He also returned to his ankle breaking habits, turning Tyrone Mings inside out for Bournemouth before slotting in a glorious goal.

The year after, in what would be his last with the Tigers, Abel was once again struck down by a series of injuries, again I think it’s fair to say that if he played 30 games, we might have been a different proposition, despite the creaky defence that we had most of the year. He scored eight goals in his ten appearances that season and when fit, still looked like he could be as special as we knew he was. At the end of the season the club said they’d made a bid to keep him, but in truth it was never going to happen, he walked away for no fee to play in Russia and we were all a lot poorer for it.

He’s continued to score goals since 2018, whether in South America or further afield and at 34 he’s still banging them in for the marvelously named Liverpool Montevideo back in his home country. I’m not sure if he’s ever been back to Hull or England since he left, but like Geo, if and when he does, a warm reception awaits him. From his blistering pace, to his wonderful first touch, his Latin passion and his sense of timing on the big occasion, Abel won the hearts of our fans, and then there was that smile… what a guy, what a player and what an absolute larker. Viva Abel Hernandez. Thanks for reading. UTT.

It’s a funny thing free speech. We’re all in favour of it, until someone uses it to say something we don’t like. And I don’t mean the fascist, tin hat wearing, Andrew Tate types of things. No, in 2025 you sometimes really can’t seem to say anything about Hull City at all unless it’s what the recipient wishes to hear, and strangely on X/Twitter/Musk-vision.. the worst types seem to be middle aged men that will have a melt down if you dare to say something that doesn’t correlate with their feelings.

Now, I’m not one for holding a difference of your politics against you and I don’t think I know many City fans who hold abhorrent views on the club.. well…maybe a few, but I would by and large defend people’s rights to have them… ok maybe not Dave Fergus… but you take my point.

I’m writing this because today I saw City fans openly discussing pushing for the play-offs next season… after beating the worst away team in the league and I made the (quite reasonable I thought) point to say, let’s stay up and draw a line under what’s been a turgid and ugly season before we start to look that far into the future. We, put simply, aren’t very good and when the season is put to bed and hopefully we’ve stayed up, I’ll invoke the Alan Green quote who once described a 0-0 draw as so uninspiring that he’d think about it until he got to the first roundabout on his way home and had to decide whether to go left or right. This went down well with most, but for some more fragile types, it was hard to swallow.

Anyway… I hope this finds everyone well and I’ll try and get some time soon to do a new “The boy was a larker”, I’ll do a poll like last time so you get to have a say. In the meantime, I was trying to think of a comparable season or period in our history to now, one where, although the intentions are good, but we’ve had to pivot mid-season to try get ourselves out of a massive hole we’d got ourselves in, and I think after a little thought I’ve got it.

2006-7 started just like this season under a new manager, and one of which there was a fair bit of buzz about. Phil Parkinson much like Tim Walter was seen as quite the catch and lots of excitement and expectation followed us into the season. We spent a fair amount on to be fair, some talented players like Michael Turner and Dean Marney, and Sam Ricketts and the chairman Adam Pearson boldly stated that our new manager would take us to somewhere, that at the time, we’d never been, the Premier League.

Now, on an almost identical timescale as Timmy Walts… things fell apart.. the odd good performance masked bigger problems and we were often caught out, not being savvy or pragmatic enough in a league that would quickly kick you directly up the backside and by late November the writing on the wall was clear to see. Get rid, or go down. I’m not sure if I can remember two sackings as monumentally popular as those two. Mainly because we all knew that if we didn’t do it , and quick, we were relegation fodder for sure.

This is the part where I’ve had to really cast my mind back, because much like Ruben Selles, early Phil Brown fell into the category of, “Ok you’re better than what was before, but I’m not certain yet” as both new managers attempted to right the wrongs of their predecessor. I say this because I think we’ve potentially forgot that Phil Brown wasn’t love at first sight, he did improve things (3 consecutive wins around the end of 2006 and start of 2007 gave us a foothold in the fight to stay up) but there were some poor times too. Between the 30th of January and 9th April we lost 8 of 13 games and if you like me, saw the 3-0 drubbing at Barnsley in February of that year, you’d admit there were more neighs than yays in the stand that night.

What perhaps kept Tanman’s head above water in that poor run, was that 4 of those results were wins, and so although 13 points in 13 games wasn’t exactly ripping up trees, it also meant that we were at least keeping pace with most teams around us. Ruben has had high highs (beating Sunderland and Sheff United away) and low lows (pretty much most things at home) and just like Phil Brown he’s had to pick up some players from super low points and be perhaps a little more pragmatic and dogged than he’d ideally like to be.

I could go on with the comparisons… for Ray Parlour (old head who led by example) see Joao Pedro… for Charlie Hughes (talented and fantastic centre back getting used to a new level) see Michael Turner, for Ian Ashbee (seen by the majority of fans as below championship standard but a fighter till the very end) see Lewie Coyle. The more I’ve thought about, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that the two seasons are in many ways eerily similar.

We even had a superbly talented keeper in Bo Myhill that despite being one of our only truly stand out performers had to battle for his place that most of the fans would have given to him willingly… sounds awfully familiar… Perhaps the difference is (and there are several clearly) that the ins and outs transfer wise have made a much larger list in 2025 and although both ownerships clearly want the club to succeed, they are taking quite different routes to get there.

Of course you’ll know what the optimistic part of me (see I do have one, you don’t need to have the chairman around for sausage, chips and beans to be the only positive fan you know) is saying that, from the turmoil of 2006-7, came the best season in the clubs history and it still actually might be just that even now. The challenge and the graft that we had to put in to survive that year was the making of Ricketts, Myhill, Dawson, Ash etc, they’d become football based lunatics the year after, that, when paired with some heavier artillery in Folan, Jay Jay and Frazier Campbell, meant we were a different beast all together and incredibly hard to break down for the opposition.

I hope we’re talking at the end of the season on similar things, about pairing Charlie Hughes, Pandur, Puerta, and a newly signed Joe Geldhardt with a few more pieces to get us really competing. In the meantime we’ll need Ruben to summon up his inner Phil Brown, bite our nails and battle, but it’s a problem in May that we’ll all pray we’re going to have. *

Up the offside tigers. Thanks for reading.

* No Hull City fans were blocked by @thelikesofhull in the making of this blog.

Ok, I’m slowly recovering from my Nostradamus like status after not only correctly predicting our loss at Burnley, but nailing the exact score that would occur. I’d like to say it made me happy, but much like the 320 quid I won at 16/1 by correctly spotting in 2020 that we were going down like a stripper’s knickers (I call it “Misery insurance”) it really isn’t much of a silver lining around a rather large cloud.

One thing I did touch upon in my last piece was the fact that my Father is the holder of epic grudges. Jimmy Armfield was forever cast into his shit list for berating the club in 1984 when they failed to get through a snow storm, forcing the league game with Burnley to be postponed. Honestly, I think he’d had done that meme by his gravestone if he could have (nicely featured in the picture above… smooth Peter… smooth).

Now if I did his shit list across all forms of life, I’d need to write a novel, the old man is one not to forgive and importantly understands the pure entertainment value of this process. So if you see him in a pub, don’t start him on Gordon Brown selling the gold reserves, Thatcher taking the police off the docks, or nepotism in modern society… not unless you have a lot of down time.

This list will focus on the branch of his shit list that I like to call the “Petty corridor”, not Ben Petty, the lumbering and generally untalented early two thousands City defender, but more of a recognition that because of a one off lack of judgement, or poor decision, my Father has metaphorically created a voodoo doll for these people and wished a plague of locusts to descend on them. His curses obviously extend to the likes of our former owners, Leeds United, and tax avoiding off shoring billionaires that plague the current game, easy targets, so I thought we’d go a little more niche. Here’s five cases where my Father’s support for our beloved club, metamorphises into a kind of puerile dislike of someone or thing, that frankly is more entertaining than the entity themselves.

1. Trevor Brooking

Trev is boring isn’t he? West Ham fans love him, he could send an insomniac to sleep with his middle of the road punditry in the eighties and nineties and he’s about as dangerous as a plain cheese sandwich. But Trev god bless him was tasked for some reason to look at Hull’s stadium needs in the dying days of Boothferry Park.. was it FA related? I would have thought so. Anyway he concluded that a 15,000 all seater stadium would suffice for us and that was it. Trevor Brooking’s name was frankly a swearword in East Hull and nothing he could ever do since could redeem it. Even the sight of the former England international on TV sets the old man off like a Tourette’s sufferer in porn shop. Poor Trev.

2. Michael Oliver

In the news today for sending off a Liverpool and Everton player at the end of the match last night, Mr Oliver isn’t especially popular with supporters from many teams. However in November 2013 he gave an incredibly harsh penalty for handball against us for Spurs to gift them 3 points with a 1-0 win. Steve Bruce went absolutely mental and got fined. The old man went twice as mental but the FA shockingly overlooked his rants. Much like Mr Brooking, his face cannot appear on TV without the big man grumbling “Michael Oliver, man of the match for Spurs in 2013” and such. Quite.

3. Roy Hodgson

Now I had to really think about this one. I know he doesn’t like Woy and that he gets the treatment whenever his jowly dinner lady face appears before him but I had to go deep into google to remember why. The origins are here.. https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/liverpool-fc-boss-roy-hodgsons-3388981

Roy in his wonderfully awful stint in charge of Liverpool had a hissy fit with City as he tried to recall Daniel Ayala, 3 weeks before the end of his loan spell and City (who had every right to) said no. He then spat out his dummy and said he wasn’t going back to City after his loan ended as we somehow got him injured, although why him being in Hull over Liverpool caused this remained a mystery.

His various downfalls after this point including his epic failure with the national team were seen largely by my Father as some sort of divine retribution for his churlish and antagonistic treatment of our football club. Unlucky Roy.

4. Cesc Fabregas

Or “Spit the dog” as my Father christened him. We all know the story, Cesc, dressed as a backing singer from Blue, entered the field of play at the end of City’s FA Cup quarter final with Arsenal in 2009. He had no right to be there and was not involved or on the bench that day. He then clearly spat at assistant manager Brian Horton and the FA went “Erm… big club… errr… we don’t care…. mmmm Spanish international” and that was that.

Not for the old man. He was thrown into the pit of those who would never return and thus each of his later career injuries or setbacks were met with a triumphant repost. I’m not certain of whether like James Richardson , Geoff is currently sat in a local coffee shop with a copy of Gazetta Football Italia, plotting the downfall of Como 1907, but in actuality… I wouldn’t rule it out.

5. Hull Fc/Grimsby Town/Scunthorpe United

Yes, it’s a fairly cheap move but these clubs doing badly just seems to make his little face cheer up. Historically you’ll know why, especially with the strength of Rugby League in the seventies and eighties. He said in 1982 as Hull FC played Widnes in the challenge cup final that “I hope they both lose” and then delighted in the fact the 14-14 all draw meant that nobody had won.

You’d think that both Scunny (currently marooned in the 6th tier of English football) and Grimsby would be beneath him as for all intents and purposes the last fifteen years has seen us occupy a vastly different world to them, but old wounds apparently don’t heal easily. He just “keeps and eye out” for them, which means he looks for their results and checks they haven’t won, then has a little smile to himself.

Even better still, he’s no fan of Rugby League but will regularly tune in to the Friday night game just to cheer on whoever FC play, and to double down he’s quite ambivalent when it comes to Hull KR and appears to hold no grudges. Sometimes it really doesn’t have to make sense.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this. As ever send my Dad your hate tweets @thelikesofhull and let’s hope we have something to provide us with some actual happiness soon, rather than just the old man hexing half the football world. UTT.

The winter of 1983-4 was particularly cold. Regular snowfalls left the country under a fairly regularly white carpet and even though most schools remained open (not like in modern times, because you know… progress or something) it was somewhat of a slog. Undeterred by such small factors as “living” my Father was determined for us to travel to watch any Hull City game where he wasn’t at work. Thus me, him, an ordinance survey map and a few rounds of sandwiches in a tupper ware container invaded a rather dinky red Datsun Cherry in the early weeks of 1983 and headed to Turf Moor from South Humberside. (yes I know… it doesn’t exist blah blah blah… it did then…)

Sometime later (I was at the time 9 years old) my middle school teacher would wax lyrical about my geographical knowledge of England only for my mother to retort “Yes, he reads maps for his Dad as they go and watch Hull City play away, that’s probably why”. This journey definitely pushed my abilities however as not only did it we attempt to cross the Pennines in frozen conditions with driving snow, we did it in a car with an engine slightly less powerful than the average hair dryer. My Father, ladies and gentleman, no respecter of mother nature or the limitations of Japanese industry.

However, arrive we did, only to get to the game and be greeted by the radio declaring that the game was off and Jimmy Armfield castigating City for not arriving (something that made my father add him to his “shit list” for the rest of his existence, more about that another time). It seemed the City coach had not endured the M62 quite as well as we did and we had indeed gone “all this way for nothing” as the song goes. So we turned around and did the same insane journey in what was essentially a 1983 version of Fred Flintstone’s car, only with the pretense of an engine rather than our feet.

We have done the story many a time about how the re-arranged game months later led us to be denied promotion by one goal scored, so I won’t do it again, but somewhere between Burnley playing to lose a game by less than three goals, rather than say “win it” in a match that meant nothing to them, Armfield’s north west biased rant against City and my nine year old’s tears in May added up to a lifetime love of City, and also an irrational hate of the wooden chaired dump that is Turf Moor and everything that came with it.

Over a decade later I was at University in Liverpool and a lad from my digs had a girlfriend who supported Burnley. Talking to her only served to confirm most of the things I already believed about the club. You’d honestly think that AC Milan and the San Siro had been dug up, rebuilt in Lancashire and covered in twenty four carrot gold. The sense of entitlement and how “big” they were was breathtaking. Especially considering the lack of doing anything in particular since the sixties. I went to watch us lose 3-1 there in 1993? I think. Against my better judgement and probably more surmised by my lack of money, I accepted a ticket with my housemate’s girlfriend in some sort of posh Burnley stand. I may have, as City were bounced around by the physically stronger but crass Burnley team said a tad too much, and her father, gave me a mouthful, the miserable old goat. It once again highlighted my dislike of anything claret and blue or Lancastrian, or both.

Where else to go? Well Brian Laws, the biggest end of a bell that ever drew breath was the manager there, which again makes me grind my teeth like a stray dog seeing a fat postman that he longs to assault. Help me stattos but didn’t he help them win 4-1 at City to all but send us down in 2009-10? I may have tried to blot the entire thing out. That season just about summed up the curse that this horrendous club seemed to have on us. We’d equalised in October at Burnley through the mercurial Geovanni’s free kick, only for Mike Jones to disallow it, because he was a gigantic plum and then doubled this down by booking Geo and later sending him off. That season alone they were awarded three penalties against us in 180 minutes of football. My one redeeming crumb of comfort was that they were relegated too, although this only guaranteed we’d have to keep playing them.

Now I know I’m biased, but I’d like to think that in our best versions (The promotion team of 2007-8, the Prem team of 2008-9, the Bruce promotion team of 2013 and FA cup team of 2014) we were essentially a good watch. We had players you wanted to see, sometimes these days I still have people when they know I support Hull beam about the likes of Geo, or Jelavic, or Huddz. Again I know I’m biased in reverse, but they really don’t add an awful lot of entertainment, even in their effective phases. Any team where Sean Dyche is the most successful modern day manager gives you a major clue. The fact that Eddie Howe spent a year there and then decided he left the kettle on in Bournemouth and left also indicates somewhat of a pattern.

I mean, there are some slightly redeeming factors I guess (If I had a gun pointed at my head) Robbie Brady played for both, as did George Boyd and I like those players, erm… didn’t Tony Norman start there? Possibly.. It’s just hard, I don’t argue that most of my rampant hatred of them is illogical (it even makes my quite like Preston North End and Blackpool) but as the old Monty Python joke goes in an abridged fashion “What did Burnley ever do for us?” I’d argue almost nothing and in fact they’ve been a source of pain for this club for many years. Even the current money bags version of them have built a reputation as conceding no goals and not entertaining anyone, it just seems to be their DNA.

Occasionally we’ve laughed in the face of the devil and turned them over, just as we’ll be hoping for later (Clue I’m writing before the game takes place, but expecting the worst, please please let me be wrong) a 1-0 away win in freezing conditions in 2013 helped us on the road to promotion, in front of a paltry 10,450 fans (yes, you’re not the giant you claim to be) thank to the ageless Stephen Quinn. A 2-0 home win over Christmas in 2015 featured Abel Hernandez essentially retiring Michael Duff as he turned him inside out that day. It hasn’t always been a snake bitten match up.

Somewhere on my X/Twitter/Elonbook timeline will no doubt feature a Burnley fan saying something original like “Bless the Hull fans” etc. Which, whilst proving a point in some ways, is inevitable with this kind of blog. However, my claret and blue heckler… if you’re still having this read to you by your literate friend… I admit most of my dislike of your club is irrational (like most peoples) perhaps inflamed by some injustices and casual acquaintances that underlined the bad taste I already had from my earlier experiences… take it as a compliment, you’ve probably just beat us 2-0 after being awarded 14 penalties and the ref celebrated with a knee slide, be happy… or not… after all… you might have to live in Burnley, so in many ways… I’ve already won…

Send your hate tweets to @thelikesofhull on twitter and UTT. Cheers.

Hello dear readers, I hope this finds you well and that you’re enjoying a relatively City free “spoiling everything” few days. You may be wondering …but this isn’t a strange clickbait mental health post today, despite the headline, instead it’s a short piece about an accidental and incremental gain I made a few weeks ago, and perhaps a little of me wondering why that was.

So I’m sure I’m not the only one who has realised that if you watch a streamed version of sport, Twitter/X is often quicker than it. So when I was watching our away win at Millwall a few weeks ago in the club offices before coaching, I took my updates off the the City twitter, as I didn’t want to know that George Honeyman had scored 18 seconds before he did. By the time we actually did score, our own warm up was underway and I only found out later. As happy as I was (and the team I coach won as well) the first half was pretty dreadful and somewhere along the line I forgot to put it back on.

Days turned into weeks and despite an infuriating 2-1 home loss to QPR and rabble rousing 3-0 destruction of Sheffield United led by old potato face himself, I haven’t turned it back on, even with all the flying rumours associated with the January transfer window and I have to say, I’m ok with it. City and the world of supporting us is a very intense watch, everyone seems to have a very strong opinion and like most people reading this, I probably broadly disagree with at least half of what is said.

A case in point…this week the ever brilliant Tiger tube shared a video from the local news about Brian Horton coming in as Hull manager and taking pre-season training in 1984, you can see it here https://x.com/TigerTubePlayer/status/1886692831042908390

This was following a heartbreaking and ultra “Typical city” glorious failure to get promoted to the second level the year before under Colin Appleton by one goal scored, and his subsequent resignation. It made me wonder looking back, what a lovely world that was. The season ended, the papers were printed, decisions were made and six weeks later, we re-started. No angry recriminations, no endless whataboutery, no endless chastising of the admin to announce something, just a new season under a new manager, with maybe a few editions of the truly beautiful green sports mail to give us the headlines.

I think there’s a lesson in there somewhere and in my usual long form convoluted sort of a way there’s a message I’m trying to highlight. Less is more, we live in a society where news and events are so instant on social media that often the world knows about them before they’re even announced. Instant gratification rules and part of me doesn’t love it or long for it to continue. I really do miss the days of the Sports mail arriving at 6.30pm and pouring over it’s content, and whilst I know that’s now gone, I don’t need to buy 100% into the modern ways of sports consumption.

All I have to do is add to stop looking at the #hcafc hashtag and I think I’ll be a reborn man. This may actually be an even darker and more ominous wormhole than the official source. A quick check on there and as well as the rumours, opinions and conjecture, we seem to have acquired some burger king sized whoppers sharing their silver foil hat opinions on the world or frankly speaking in an entirely new language that I neither understand or have the desire to translate, as well as the clickbait, some pretty unkind takedowns of fellow fans and opinions that even Elon Musk might think twice before going to share.

I’m sure there are some normal people with hcafc in their x/twitter names (and let’s be honest I’m leaving myself wide open to a feeding frenzy of gen z anger on here afterwards) but the “oddball conspiracy discussing indecipherable content quota” seems notably higher than in the general public at large, which is quite something on this app these days as it’s already a cesspool of misinformation of Brian Laws type proportions.

But fair play to them (I guess) it’s their world to explore as they wish and let’s let them crack on. What I guess my point is, is that I’m notably happier and less stressed about this wonderful batshit football club, when I’m not spending so much time exploring this bizarre world that’s now been created. In the meantime we signed John Egan, I quite like him and I’ll go in with an open mind to the rest of the season. I do like others think we lack a wide left footed defender of quality but after witnessing Ryan “cry baby no tackles” Giles impersonation of a left back on telly this week. I’m still glad he’s gone. But here’s the key… I’m ok. I’m not as invested perhaps, but just like the Kempton Stand diehards in 1984, I’m ambivalent about the future, although I think we’ll stay up and spending all day arguing back and forth with Asa_Hcafc from Heddon who is a “Pandur enthusiast” isn’t going to keep us up anyway.

Fingers crossed.

UTT.

There’s a reason the blog has become more and more of a walk down memory lane recently. Well, I say recently, sometimes something sparks my interest in the current situation (sacking Walter Tim or getting knocked out of the FA cup) and I use that to look back, but on the whole I’d admit I’ve avoided saying too much about the club in the last two years.

Two or three reasons really, one I’m not really going much as my time is being taking up with non-league coaching, so most of my City consumption is TV based and I think it’s hard to get a totally accurate take on things. Two it’s not the most inspirational write, I think the current product gets a hell of a lot of attention and posts and mine isn’t significantly different or more valid than anyone else’s.

Three and this might be the most poignant reason, City twitter and the other versions or it are somewhat of shark infested waters for me these days, lots of “I told you so” merchants, finger pointing, points scoring and tribal-ness for me, and I suspect many of you are like formerly some of the most prolific city fans and have kept a low profile of late.

Sometimes I write a reply to snarky comment, and then just think “nah” and delete it, it’s wasted energy, I don’t want an argument with someone about City, it’s bad energy, if you really think what you think, good luck to you, there’s an element of pile ons and put downs that aren’t really for me on this app. So I’ll keep my powder dry.

So, with that in mind let’s break down January 27th 2025 into 3 things under the heading of “Good City and Bad City” and if you’re ok with my takes lovely, if not, send your hate tweets on X to @thelikesofhull (my name was taken in vain unintentionally by disappointed Sheffield United fans last week, so that’s always a good sign) or pop onto Bluesky and call me a twat or something… it all works. UTT and all that.

Good City

Ivor Pandur

Player of the year hands down for me from what I’ve seen. Often great even when we’ve been tepid and he’s got better and better. Had no issue with Rushworth and he might even be a tad better with the ball at his feet but you’ve got to believe the boys in the squad back Pandur and will feel at ease with him back in goal. Sometimes keepers are hard to totally surmise with just their saves, Pandur has a presence now and you back him in the big moments, he’s calm but he’s also the aggressor in one on ones when they happen. Acun has got far from everything right, but he definitely nailed this one. You could even argue he could attract attention from the league above.

Ruben Selles

Obvious I know but it’s still true. Ruben has come in, assessed everything around him and quickly set about putting things right. He’s pragmatic but calm, passionate but realistic and he’s clearly got the boys onside. Not unlike a certain French football league manager did a couple of years before him, he saw a leaky defence and some people not pulling their weight and started by sorting that our first. We no longer look like conceding every time someone comes forward and slowly he’s providing the team with players who can make impact at the other end.

Good managers can bring in new players who make a difference (Crooks, Geldhardt, Matazo) but the real sign of how good Ruben is, is the difference he’s made to those already here and who might have been struggling. Sean McCloughlin looks reborn, Joao Pedro was already one of the better players in but he’s gained a spring in his step, Abu Kamara has gone from the outhouse to the winners enclosure.. and I could go on. We’ve got some way to go yet, but I think we’ve found another good one, so let’s hope we keep him this time.

Jared Dublin

Again it’s early doors, but we’ve shipped out what wasn’t working (Mehlem, Giles, Longman) we’re looking to ship out more (god knows we need to) and what he’s brought in so far looks a distinct improvement. As I’m writing it looks like Louis Barry is going to be added to the list and Geldhardt and Crooks were both outstanding on Friday night as well as Matazo fitting in well straight away. Sure we’ll see how much Amrabat plays and what Lincoln can do, but it does seem to bode well overall. I think if we can get a left back in, we’re almost there, especially if Charlie Hughes is nearing fitness. The finances may well be a damned sight trickier to balance up, but let’s hope we hit the jackpot with somebody and that’ll help plug the gap. Well done to this point Mr Dublin.

Bad City

Everything related to the Ryan Giles deal

This whole thing was a disaster both financially and on the pitch. We’ve paid way too much to take a player that however you dress it up had essentially just failed at Luton (no matter how much they spent or how well he’d done before, he couldn’t dislodge Alfie Doughty and didn’t deserve to if you speak to any Hatters) We’ve paid him plenty for the pleasure of some very half hearted performances and he’s left for a club that don’t have to buy him if he continues to be Stephen Kingsley with nice hair. It’s done now, and there’s no going back but jesus… what a mess. Please learn from this.

FFP, the mounting losses, eek

This is one I usually keep to myself, mainly because like most things financial there’s lots of missing details in there and the people who are shouting from the rooftops that it’s impending doom AND those who are saying that those people are idiots and this is how things should be done… are probably both wrong. Far from being the Martin Lewis of football blogs, I’ll just say we’ve had a couple of real goes at chucking the dice so far and it’s not really worked, let’s hope the next one does, so we don’t have to shake like a shitting dog when we read “The price of football” and their breakdown of our finances on twitter. It doesn’t take a genius (and I’m not one) that we probably can’t do this forever.

Fan goading and feuding

Honestly, it’s a messy place the #hcafc hashtag at times, sniping, whataboutery, angry tin hat wearing lunatics, personal attacks etc etc. I try just to swerve most of it, but it’s hard. Is is that hard just to be civil to other fans of this club? I have mates that have wildly different takes to me on life, and football and both, does it really help to make these differences so stark by disrespecting each other? I don’t think so but then maybe as an older fan (51 damn it, when did that happen?) maybe my run ins with John Fenwick on City Independent 25 years ago gave me a little more wisdom.

A small piece of advice, read Tony Turner (@tonytiger67) hands down the funniest bloke on the whole of twitter and a never ending source of brilliant city quips, dip into Tiger Tube (@TigerTubePlayer) and get lost in the reams of brilliant City content, have a look at what John Uzzell says (@Uzzell01) for a balanced view that has reflects what most fans really think and the same for the City Southern Supporters club (@HCSStweets) for the away perspective from folks that have lived a life outside of Hull and are still mad enough to love us all the same.

I know I’ll get stick for leaving out other good people and creators of city content, there’s plenty of good people out there is essentially what I’m saying, go have a chinwag with them, you do you…. Turn down the volume of the squeaky wheels, enjoy being a City fan, because the process of the ups and downs of supporting this club are going to cause you more that enough pain. You don’t need to add to it.

Ok I’ll put my tin hat on and hide for a bit, hopefully the current team are heading to a better destination and there’s a reason or two to be cheerful. Thanks for reading, keep the faith.

I don’t really want to think about City at the moment. Every time we seem to make progress, we then step backwards again and as soon as you’re looking up the league, you’re inevitably metaphorically slapped back in the face again and you start praying that the Portsmouth squad go down with norovirus.. add that to some less than wholesome content on the #hcafc hashtag recently and I’d pretty much had enough of our current timeline.

Club admin is a pretty thankless task I must admit but when my phone flashed up today with them declaring that Joe Geldhardt’s strike last night was, and I quote “Not a bad way to open your city account” I must admit I was tempted to disagree. The goal itself was very good obviously, but there are many better ways to open your account, with an equaliser, or a winner, or not a goal in front of a freezing cold beleaguered fan base that ultimately meant diddly of squat. Yes, yes I know dear reader it’s churlish of me, and I know it was a well taken goal, but by then I just want to switch off to anything Hull City related until the next time I can face it.

All of which made me think of goals I either didn’t really want to want to remember or that were forgotten like I wanted to forget last night. I couldn’t find everything I wanted (Billy Paynter’s missile against Crewe in an otherwise incredibly mediocre performance in 2005, or Jon Whitney’s Uberthunderbastard vs Peterborough United in 1999 for example) but Tiger Tube is a wonderful resource. Without them and Tigerbase I don’t think I’d be able to tip toe through yesteryear like I’m about to, so thank you folks, it’s a fantastic resource that never stops being ace.

So here they are… five goals that you may not recall, might vaguely remember or have collected dust in your DVD collection and a little bit of background with it. Just like Joe Gelhardt’s strike will do in future years, they may be forgotten, and perhaps harshly, as they really were very good. I hope you enjoy and as ever send me your hate tweets on X @thelikesofhull or bluesky bollock ins, and tell me what a load of old Jeff Lee my blog is. Keep the faith and enjoy. UTT

Shaun Smith vs Cambridge United 2002

Jan Molby got a couple of things right, in bringing in Ian Ashbee and Stuart Elliott, but he also got quite a bit wrong in recruitment and just about everything else. Shaun Smith was one example of that. Beloved by Crewe fans, the 31 year old full back joined us and was not as was described on the box, frankly I’ve seen wheelie bins turn quicker. Anyway he was soon jettisoned from the starting line up and only played twenty times for City. In the midst of this underachievement he unexpectedly went prime Dave Beckham and scored this wonder free kick against Cambridge United in what I thought (foolishly) was going to be the point where we turned around our season. It wasn’t, he didn’t either, but wow, what a goal.

Brian McGinty vs Colchester United 1997

There’s an argument that Steven Boyack’s piledriver was even better but sadly the EFL programme knew better so didn’t bother putting it in. I was at this game as a previous Mrs Thelikesofhull lived in East Anglia, so rather than face a day of her six fingered relatives, I drove myself to Colchester to see the Hateley led also rans (which is kind) against the play off chasing hosts. We went 2-0 down, and fought all the way back to 3-2 up only to lose in injury time, in the most typical city way imaginable. Anyway, the equaliser was a wonderful cutting run by the East Kilbride Neymar himself as he powers through and smashes the ball into the top corner. Quite brilliant and ultimately quite pointless. Cheers city.

Tom Cairney vs Norwich City 2010

Speaking of dull ventures in a dull place, here in 2010 I found myself in deepest darkest Norfolk, hoping City could break their run of about a thousand away games without a win, and watching spanner faced Nigel Pearson attempt to achieve this feat by literally never attacking.

It’s hard to put into words how little we deserved to win this game, but essentially we were absolute bobbins for 80 minutes, created zero chances and were let off time and again by a Norwich side being traumatised by their fans insistence in singing the world’s worst football song. Completely undeservedly Bobby Koren who looked at least four hundred yards offside scored after a shot deflected to him and then Tom Cairney wiped away his Clearisil and hit an absolute stonker of a free kick to seal it.

Daylight robbery and a terrible match, but what a goal.

Gary Brabin vs Leyton Orient 1999

All goals aren’t forgotten because they were in bad matches, or poor results and here’s an example of one. The climb out of trouble in 1999 was remarkable and fair play to the club in remembering it so well on it’s 25th anniversary last year. I probably never went to more games that year as you pretty much had to go, and this was a great day. The vastly underrated David Brown’s perfectly weighted header won the day, but before that something other worldly happened. A man the size of a fully grown gorilla and probably with a similar outlook on life took off… in the East London sky and scored a bicycle kick. Frankly City should have made this into a t-shirt, a bit like the Air Jordan logo, but with Brabs defying gravity and logic to go airborne and give us the lead. Both brutal, beautiful and majestic in the same measure.

Leigh Jenkinson vs Stoke City 1992

Speaking of forgettable, see the 1991-92 season for City. We were newly relegated to the third tier and never really suggested we’d be leaving it any time soon finishing a hugely mediocre 14th and being poorer than a church mouse on tax your cheese day. Terry Dolan wasn’t especially hated at this point but we still had the odd player who could do a little bit. Not least Mr Leigh “Jinky” Jenkinson, who would leave us not too long after to go play for top level Coventry City. If you’re of a certain age you might not know who he was, but if you did watch him, he was a talented boy. Not unlike Chris Waddle in style and could on his day be a match winner, in truth he probably didn’t fulfil his considerable potential after leaving the club, but his double that day was special against promotion chasing Stoke City, firstly a lob from range and then a fantastic run on the counter, fed by a young Dean Windass, with a step over and lethal finish. Quite brilliant and generally quite forgotten in time.

Hope you enjoyed the trip down memory lane, and hopefully we’ll score some goals that matter a bit more soon. Cheers.

I always think greatest ever team line ups are essentially flawed. Players represent the era they are from and what was incredible in 1986, may well not be in 2025 as time has changed. However the player from the first era didn’t have half of the technology or advancements in football to help them.. what if they did? Would they hack the more technical and scientific approaches to football now? Would this improve them beyond ways we can fathom? The questions are endless and they don’t really have answers, just opinions and speculation.

I guess the legacy of say Chris Chilton is that he was City’s greatest ever goal scorer and forward and his record transcends any of that conjecture, the same can probably be said of Dean Windass and his place in our history, I don’t think you could realistically withhold his name from a City all time eleven, and the news in the last few weeks of his dementia diagnosis was incredibly sad, I hope he’s well and wish him the best in the months ahead.

The rest though, they are all up for debate and often the first discussion that I’ve often had with fellow City fans is, who is our greatest ever keeper? It usually boils down to two different players in two different eras in Tony Norman and Bo Myhill. I think my heart says Norman, but my head increasingly says Myhill, however the very fact he’s so prominent in that conversation is a measure of just how special he was and that most (you never know with our fans) would put him above such names as Allan McGregor, Alan Fettis or Billy Bly really does show you how well he’s remembered by the fan base.

One of several players that the incredible Peter Taylor brought in during his early years at the club, Bo cost the princely sum of 50k from Aston Villa, City deciding to bring him in, knowing that Stockport (where he’d been on loan) were preparing to buy him too. He came in generally replacing the popular Paul Musselwhite and like most 21 year old keepers he had his ups and downs. He was clearly a better athlete than the older and more experienced pro however he could be a little more risky and less consistent.

Taylor was (like he was on most things football related) proved completely right however and Bo was a large part of the climb up the leagues city quickly navigated at the start of the early two thousands. Like Ashbee, Dawson and Barmby he’d simply adjust to each new level and kick on effortlessly, all of them were way above the level we started at. I do think it’s fair to say however that once we were up the second level of English football again for the first time in more than fifteen years, we began to see the absolute best of Bo.

We were no longer the big fish and if you go back to 2005-6 the general consensus amongst the stuffier and more arrogant fans of the championship were that we’d soon be gone and weren’t good enough for that level. It was a slog and at times we had to steal points on the counter or hang on for some results, which wasn’t what the fanbase had got used to.

This is where Bo comes into “GOAT” territory for me, he literally won us points and games where we could and (some would say) should have been beaten comfortably with sheer genius. I’d encourage you to watch the highlights of the 3-0 away win at Stoke in 2006 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSiP1DlX_L0 where he saves not one but two penalties, the first a great low stop to thwart I think Liam Lawrence (help me stattos) and the second as he completely outthought Luke Chadwick who hit the ball straight down the middle only for Bo to have stood upright and make the simple save. (also watch the highlights for a fat lad from Barnsley looking like prime Bergkamp with his turn and finish)

Bo had moments, moments where you know he saved us and got us over the line. That’s what makes him stand out in my eyes…. Bo won matches. His save in the first leg win at Watford is one of the most incredible reactions we’d ever witnessed as he claws out Matt Sadlier’s volley even though Wayne Brown’s massive bald head clearly unsights him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YkkvEONZEc By the end of the second leg we’d ran away to comfortably win but that save you felt broke Watford and that’s what he did, he broke other teams wills.

But there’s good, there’s really good and then there’s the single greatest goalkeeper performance I’ve ever witnessed. A City side, low on confidence and without an away win all season went to Spurs to get paggered, and they did…. in everything apart from the score. Bo saved everything and anything that came his way and Spurs simply could not find a way past him.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlqHwj7pL6c

In truth that performance was other worldly, I don’t know if we’ll ever see the likes of that again, you’d hope to be honest we wouldn’t need to as letting someone would have six clear chances to win isn’t exactly sustainable. It’s without doubt the best I’ve ever seen a goalkeeper play in our shirt and I can’t imagine it’s about to be beaten anytime soon.

Right at the end of the play off final where Bo, Sam Ricketts, Michael Turner, Wayne Brown and Andy Dawson seemed to have turned on some sort of force field to repel the ball, there’s one last cross put in by Lee Trundle at the very end of injury time, if I was watching by then through my fingers I could see the large figure of Bo pluck that cross out of the sky (it’s here as if you didn’t know https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7ghb4J_yOo) Wayne Brown jumps on Bo’s back and slaps his shaved head, because he knows, like we knew, that was it. We’d broken through the glass ceiling and achieved something nobody thought we could. Really fitting that his intervention was the last moment of that game.

After we were relegated two years later Bo left in the great fire sale of 2010 for a measly 1.5 million pounds and played a further hundred games at West Brom and Birmingham City. Things would not be the same again keeper wise for many years. I don’t keep up with who is in or out of the hall of fame for us, I’m presuming he’s not in yet? If so then that needs rectifying sooner rather than later. Because Bo Myhill was an absolute larker and did as much for this club as any keeper in living memory. Thanks Bo.

UTT.

Happy new year Hull City fans… I hope you had an enjoyable Christmas helped largely by the fact it feels like for the first time in a few months… we’ve got hope. (also… this is clearly well known for being what kills you..) The players are playing for Ruben, he’s more pragmatic, the work defensively is crystal clear to see, he just needs a bit more talent to help him, in this fans humble opinion… Crooks is a good start, let’s hope we can add four or five more. We have a fighting chance now, and given how grim things were, I’ll take it.

Soooo… anywho… I saw the reaction to young Will Jarvis going and it made me think. Lots of people offering to taxi him to Nottingham metaphorically (or literally) and the crux of this seems to be his “sulking” or sense of not wanting to be here. Ok, so this is 2025 and that’s often the way now, young players have agents, agents like moves, players want to play. But when it came down to it, I really thought, why wasn’t he happy? And the simple answer is, because he didn’t play. He only got very small cameos as a chance and essentially he thinks (as he should) that he’s good enough. It feels a bit churlish to kill him for this.

Now I’ve been in non-league football for the last 18 months, I see the emotions of players who are taken off, or on the bench, or fighting for places, and I’m not sure Will’s reactions were indefensible. Were they a little petulant? Maybe? But when your whole job, your whole life, has been to do this, to play and to be a footballer, and you’re watching (and in Will’s case watching several people do a very bad job in your position) it must be gut wrenching. Go back to what I said about non-league, I want a player to be hacked off that they don’t play, I want them to think “I’ll show you!” and then do it, because if you’re happy not playing, there’s something much more wrong. I guess the qualifier for that is how you show it, and you could argue that Will chose the wrong ways (note to young players, delete your instagram).

Maybe my overall message here is look at history, we’ve had a fair few versions of Will that didn’t quite make it, for various reasons and then did very well after, somewhat sticking it back to us. Maybe we need to do what Villa did and have some buy back clauses up our sleeve, because sometimes all you need to do is give a lad a run, some TLC, a bit of backing and they’ll show you exactly what they can be. Don’t believe me? Well my friend, here’s four modern examples of players we kicked to the curb, only to find out, they were actually probably good enough to have made it with us. I hope you enjoy it, conversely if you don’t, send your hate tweets to @thelikesofhull on Elon Musk’s terribly popular X app, and try not to overthrow any governments with your next tweet. UTT.

Clayton Donaldson

Timing is so important in all of these cases and it is here in Clayton’s career. If he’d have broke through City’s youth ranks in the nineties he’d have been straight in, probably would have done well and then been sold on, but how’s your luck? Because as he broke through, we’d found money for the first time in twenty years and with the likes of Alexander, Dudfield, Forrester and then latterly Burgess and Allsopp ahead of you, playing time wasn’t going to be vastly available. But the signs were there, he went on loan to National league teams in Scarborough, Harrogate and Halifax and won the National league north player of the month, scoring 3 in 5 for Harrogate Town. In reality Peter Taylor was probably doing him a favour by letting him join York City in 2005, but boy did he then show what he could do. One goal about every two games for York over two seasons, got him a move to the Scottish Premier League at Hibernian, and highly successful spells at Crewe, Birmingham and Brentford led to him scoring over two hundred senior goals, quite an astonishing achievement. He’s only just stopped playing at the ripe old age of 40, and also played (and scored) for Jamaica internationally. There’s an argument that Clayton is the best modern youth player who ever came through the club, that was released striker wise, unless you count old pillow adjusting, CBD wine gums seller, who obviously came back. Clayton was some player.

Tom Cairney

Now, there’s a theme here to most of these players. Clayton is an unusual one in that he’s not generally badly regarded by City fans, but most of the rest are, because like Will Jarvis, they thought they were good enough and that metamorphised into various forms, which generally weren’t well received by the supporters. Step up one Tom Cairney. He’s a fine player that’s shown his ability for many years, he’s probably spent more of his career slightly above the levels we’ve occupied, but if you’re grinding your teeth as you read this and saying things you wouldn’t repeat in front of your mother regarding him, I’m not surprised.

Bursting onto the scene in our second season in the Premier League in 2009-10, he scored a wonder goal at Everton, which didn’t stop us from getting panned, but looked to be some player, and he was. But these were soon to be turbulent times. Phil Brown would be gone a game later, moon faced relegation deliverer Iain Dowie wouldn’t last much longer and by the time we’d sold anything we could in the Championship and hired bags of fun Nigel “I’m just popping out for a coffee and in no way am I driving to Leicester to sign a contract” Pearson, Tom didn’t fit as well as he previously did into the philosophy. Although he played the most games he ever would for us at 29 that season. Injuries didn’t help him, with foot, ankle and knee injuries sustained in three consecutive seasons.

Maybe we just didn’t really appreciate him enough, I’m not sure, but I think a lot of us (myself included) saw what he didn’t do (track back hard, tackle) rather than what he did do (create goals). Like Jarvis, and some more to come I think he was perceived as a little petulant and spoilt, whereas allowances have definitely been made for players who were more that way than Tom. He probably wasn’t Steve Bruce’s kind of player off the ball and thus when we returned to the top level in 2013, away he went to Blackburn.

I don’t need to give you the potted history in the same way I did Clayton. He’s proved to be an effective Premier League player and an outstanding Championship player, much like Clayton, he was a victim of timing, because a 23 year old Tom Cairney would currently be our best midfield player and would undoubtedly increase our goals scored index. Bottom line, he backed himself, and he was right.. even if we aren’t likely to build a statue for him and thank him.

Conor Townsend

Speaking of timing, how’s Conor’s luck? As he breaks into the fringes of the first team at Hull City, after a very strong youth career, the left back in his way, is Premier League and Champion’s League, international Andrew Roberston. That could be that, but there’s a few caveats to make in his case that appeared to double down on missing out on his considerable talent.

We don’t need to go into why we didn’t play him, that’s pretty obvious, although loaning him to some of the worst places to live in Britain seemed a tad harsh (Chesterfield, Grimsby, Scunthorpe, Dundee… blimey). He eventually moved permanently to Scunny who then sold him to West Brom in 2018, with City reportedly declining to use their buy back clause in the process. (by 2018 our left back was no longer a position of strength to say the very least…some would say this was a little short sighted) Conor did very well over six seasons in the Midlands and much like Tom Cairney, could say he’s shown he was more than good enough for City, perhaps even better than us, although it hurts to say so.

He recently joined Ipswich who seemed to do the football transfer equivalent of “Supermarket sweep” in August and has only featured once since. Only 31 and very capable, this fan would be a very happy one if we did bring him home one more time on loan for the rest of the season, give me Conor over Ryan Giles and his pining to be at Middlesborough inhaling all of the pollution. You never know.

Sonny Bradley

I was going to do five players, but I just couldn’t bring myself to include Liam “The Liar” Cooper in this article. Ok player, silly silly boy as a human, you all know why. I’ll be kind, by not saying what most of you are thinking. I hear Bulgaria is cold.

Sonny, much like Cooper and Cairney was a victim of the success the club rebuilt in the early 2010’s under Steve Bruce and wasn’t going to prize himself ahead of the likes of McShane, Hobbs, Chester etc. He went to Portsmouth after several loans and has proved himself to be an effective and no nonsense defender in the second and third levels of English football.

Sonny isn’t the talent that the other three were, but maybe that’s why he’s on the list. He didn’t go to North Ferriby and sulk, he cracked on and overachieved, earned some very good money and pretty much can’t buy a drink in Luton. He was also a much more effective player than several who represented the black and amber colours in his absence during the leaner years. (see Mazuch, Pennington, Tafazolli and Ridgewell)

He’s done very well and had himself a very effective career, plus he did it whilst not telling massive whoppers and pretending to be Scottish or a lifetime Leeds United fan, fair play to you Sonny.

So there it is, I hope Will Jarvis does well at Notts County, a very nice club and one that’s ready to go up the levels. If we play them in the near future, he’ll probably get a “warm” reception, but I can’t help but admire the kid for backing himself to prove he can do it, if he does half of what the four above managed, he’ll have made the right decision.

Thanks for reading.

City fans debating the possibilities in the FA cup draw this week were possibly more entertaining than the draw itself. The official twitter site even sharing a joke with City fan Albert Brigham who correctly and lamentably nailed on that we’d get the plum draw of Doncaster Rovers. However in years gone by the FA cup third round draw was the absolute aim for the club, in terms of being involved in it and we’d be crossing every proverbial finger and toe for a chance to prove ourselves against a team from football’s elite.

It’s fair to say the FA cup has been a fairly cruel temptress in our history, with more failure, and ignominious defeats than glorious success, however we’ve had a few moments, one being rather blisteringly obvious, where City have made an imprint on the world’s biggest knockout competition. I don’t know about you dear reader, but I don’t care how hard the FA, the BBC, ITV, the Premier League and god knows who else tries to ruin the mystique of the competition, I still love it, and therefore when we’re taking down the Christmas decorations in a month’s time I’ll be looking forward to Tamworth vs Tottenham Hotspur’s more than any other none City related club game this season. It’s beauty and brilliance simply can’t be erased, which is only proven by the fact it’s still great even after all and sundry have had a go at making it terrible.

5 years ago, I tried explaining to a Danish person, why the main game I wanted to watch that weekend was Newport County vs Manchester City. The answer was essentially because I, like many of you, just believe in the FA cup like it’s Santa Claus, it’s illogically brilliant, and I can’t really put it into words that do it justice, but I just do, and throughout the years it’s given us some of the best of times. Which led me to this blog. I’ve gone down memory lane to recall three times the FA cup has pulled down our pants in front of the whole country and three times it’s given us an incredible ride, I hope you enjoy it.

FA Cup hell…

1997-98 Hull City 0 Hednesford 2

By the year 1997 you’d think there was pretty much no way we could have been dragged through the humiliation mud than we already were, but here it was. Hednesford flying high in the level below turned up and played a City team with all the guile and skill of a broken bicycle covered in dog dirt. You almost felt it was more of a shock if we didn’t lose, buuuuuuut… we did anyway. Going down 2-0 at home with Match of the Day loving the big story and giving us twelve minutes of the main programme when we’d normally have needed some sort of hurricane in East Yorkshire to have justified this.

The ever wonderful Tigertube put it up this year, take a look at it here.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXqwJNUaF8g What strikes you when you see it back is, that actually we were pretty damned unlucky. Tubby Lard Rioch gives away a stupid penalty and then City lay siege to the Hednesford goal, Matt Hocking and Dwayne Darby both headed against the bar, we had another cleared off the line, the ball just wouldn’t go in. It continued this way until Hednesford broke out on the counter in the final minute and made it two. It really didn’t reflect the game, but in that era… nobody cared. We’d found a new and inventive way of hurting the fan base and even your Premier League twatty mate at work had ample evidence to rub your face in it on Monday morning. Cheers City.

2000-2001 Hull City 0 Kettering 1 (replay)

Despite the fact I was at the first game of this 1 goal in 180 minutes thriller, I still needed the help of Matt from Tigerbase and his excellent website to help my fading memory. https://tigerbase.hullcity.com/

In the 0-0 at their old Rockingham Road venue, here’s what I recall… 1.They’d left the pitch or played on it deliberately close to the game to stop City from passing the ball and it resembled an unloved cow field. 2. In an argument about Lee Philpott City fans got pretty near to blows, and the criticiser (I think I’ve made up a word) was berated for his West Yorkshire accent. Things got decidedly more heated than on the pitch. 3. That’s it.

We actually didn’t have a terrible team and would go on to make the play offs that year despite the financial turmoil. However, we were a tad slight in the attacking areas and David Brown, Clint Marcelle and Jonny Eyre struggled to impact a large and direct Kettering back four.

Well I thought… “when they’ve got to play football at City… the best pitch in the league.. we’ll shit ’em” stupidly. And so it turned out to be. Kettering scoring a second half winner at BP in another game devoid of quality and sticking City’s face in the cat litter tray of life once again. In Brian Little’s mild defence, his playing of Jason Perry and the FA Cup eared Steve Swales would suggest he wasn’t that arsed about us going out, which we duly did.

Hull City 0 Crawley Town 1

Incredibly, only 2 and a bit years before we’d grace the hallowed Wembley turf in the actual final, we managed to lose at home to Crawley Town, managed by the bin bag full of milk himself Steve Evans and not only that, we probably deserved to.

I feel like I’ve erased this game from my memory over the years, even though it was actually the fourth round and we’d beaten Ipswich to get there. Matt Tubbs scored, we rested loads of players, Steve Swales started (no really he didn’t but Danny East, and Liam “the liar” Cooper did) and off we popped. 14,000 or so mad souls turned up to watch it and Steve went home and ate an entire chicken that night, deep fried in lard and smeared in melted chocolate from one hundred Kinder Buenos.

Probably.

FA Cup heaven

Hull City 2 Liverpool 3 1989

For the longest time I think most City fans of my generation thought this would be as good as it got. Two 2-1 away wins took the second tier City into the 5th round of the FA cup and we drew Liverpool at home. It’s hard to describe to anyone in their twenties or younger now what that meant. Liverpool were Manchester City and Manchester United rolled into one. They won everything, all the time, and almost never failed.

We had an odd season under Eddie Gray, we started poorly but then around the FA cup run we galvanised and the combination of Whitehurst and Edwards clicked. We climbed the table and as we played Liverpool we were in decent form, winning four of the previous five league games. After we were beaten in this game, we won a grand total of one more league game and clung on to our league status by the skin of our teeth.

The game itself was absorbing and a classic of the type. Liverpool took the lead in the first half and looked fully in control, I always remember a very nervous Neil Buckley looking way off it in this game and it looked like we could be on the end of quite a battering. However after Gary Ablett slipped Whitehurst equalised and then in a whirlwind ten minute spell Big Bill headed the ball back to Keith Edwards, mouth on stick Jan Molby lost his footing and Keith simply didn’t miss chances like that. 2-1 at half time and it seemed like a fever dream to the City faithful.

“Cometh the hour, cometh the really annoying permanently moustached boring know it all tit” said nobody ever and two quick fire goals from John Aldridge sealed victory for Liverpool that day, but City gained many admiring glances that day and did themselves proud on the big stage. Again have a look on the brilliant Tiger Tube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWyn_q91Rzw City came desperately close to an equaliser after an wonderful Billy Askew cross caused problems (and Billy was some player then) but Whitehurst couldn’t quite make the contact to put it in and Andy Payton’s shot was blocked.

Luton Town 1 Hull City 2 1998

Unusual choice perhaps, but back in 1998 and with things about as bad as they could ever be, City were widely expected to get a lesson from a Luton team chasing promotion a league above us. With caretaker boss Warren Joyce in charge we weren’t given a hope. But young Ben Morley playing in a more attacking role gave us a shock lead with a lovely half volley.

Luton restored parity with another very well taken effort, but Big Bad Bob Dewhurst then headed in a second half winner and we were heading for the third round. It was in some ways the start of the great escape, as the fresh faced Joyce got some much needed credit in the bank with both a beleaguered squad and fan base. In some of the darkest of times, this result was a tiny light, and one which offered us hope that better days were to come.

The whole run of 2014

There’s not a City fan I know that seriously had a major issue with losing that final. I know you could point to the non-corner we conceded from as Lee Probert’s guide dog obscured his view after Yaya Sonogo took the ball out himself with his diving flippers for feet. However… we gave everything we had that day, we shocked the living daylights out of the Islington Whoppers and we just couldn’t quite get it over the line. We were heroic, we were proud and it was an incredible occasion.

But it wasn’t just the final was it? It was the battling win at Middlesborough, the composed and classy swatting of Southend, both avoiding a banana skin and reminding the world that Matt Fryatt was a god type figure that should probably be put in charge of some sort of Polynesian Island and allowed to run it as he sees fit, it was the late equaliser by the highly unlikely source of one Yannick Sagbo at Brighton, despite the fact their fans and the coverage had decided they’d already won and thanked us for coming, it was they absolute paggering of the donkey ring road riding, sports direct shopping Sunderland that took us to Wembley part one.

Sure the Sheffield United game was one to avoid if you had some sort of heart condition, but all’s well that end’s well and David Meyler being slotted through to kill the game off and put us into the final was a mix of relief and euphoria that we’ve rarely known in combination. That run, the run of all runs was glorious, it was fun and it vetoed more typical City moments than anything in living memory. As a City fan, the two moments you can never take from me is the first play off final win and then taking part in that day at Wembley. We really shouldn’t ever complain after those days, as they were the best of times and it’s more than any of us who trudged out of Kettering or Hednesford losses thought we’d experience in our life time.

Thanks for reading and UTT.