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.