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.