Ok so this is the third blog I’ve done where I’m wishing you all an enjoyable break. In reality I shouldn’t bother writing much during the season and just do bits from April to August, as that’s when the content starts, so soz. It is though a good time to reflect back on the performance of the departing Ruben Selles, who I guess will sit in the middle of the pack when it comes to all time City managers, in that he took over a car crash and somehow got the self same vehicle going, and scraped and shuddered it over the finish line. To steal an eighties quote from the NFL “It wasn’t pretty but this ain’t no beauty contest”. I think that pretty aptly sums up the last six months under the Spaniard’s stewardship.
Of course we’ve got the tribes out on social media as ever, which does become tiring. On one end you’ve got City fans angry that we once again face another summer of reset and uncertainty, then you’ve got them being belittled by others who somehow are still hugely confident in the process to follow (2 terrible managers appointed so far, 1 ok, 1 good). I must admit I don’t feel quite as aggrieved as I did a year ago, when I like many others felt that we had the right person in charge of our club, sure it wasn’t perfect but this season would simply not have happened with Liam Rosenior at the helm. For Ruben, I think it’s a shame, and I don’t think we saw the best of him, but there were also signs that things weren’t great too. It’s just the constant change and the waste and turmoil that goes along with it that stings this time.
I almost wrote a piece in the run in, roughly called, “The pragmatism conundrum” in which I explored how City had turned the corner under RS, especially away, by banking in, countering and being hard to beat, but that this simply wasn’t working at home. Time got the better of me in this piece, but I think realistically this was the crux of the problem he faced. It’s fairly simple to look at our mental style under Timmy Waltz and say, “Well let’s leave two players back from corners” etc. And Selles made us almost instantly a tougher and more direct team who were harder to break down, but the issue then becomes, how do you throw the shackles off a little at home to break down teams that are essentially doing that back to us, and this is what didn’t really develop.
I think (and it is think, I’m not totally certain) that right at the end we seemed to move from a 4-3-3 to a 4-2-3-1 which was aimed at creating security for the attackers to push on and centralise Joe Geldhardt as his wide stint wasn’t helping him at all. This might have been done a little earlier in retrospect and it’s this lack of transition into a more potent force at home that’s seen RS get his cards. It is harsh clearly, and he had many mitigating factors, not least the season ending injury to Eliot Matazo, that might have delayed the formation changing as he was well suited to the role.(neither Regan Slater or Matt Crooks are natural deep sitting midfielders but were sometimes asked to do that) This and the lack of a potent or effective striker to fill the nine role were two hammer blows, essentially Kyle Joseph’s lack of effectiveness as he tried to adjust to a new league and our home woes has been enough to send Ruben to the dole queue, which again seems pretty rough.
Ruben seems an incredibly professional man, he did connect to the fans, he must have had hardly a day off in the last six months, you cannot question how hard he worked towards saving us from the drop, or his staff, the whole thing to me hinges on the philosophical debate around whether things were going to improve under him next season. Giving him a pre-season, 5-6 players that he wanted and 5-6 out that he didn’t want you’d give him a shot at making us a top half team, I think personally that’s the chance he deserved. But clearly others didn’t have the same faith, fans too and that’s not the direction we’re going in. The owners want success now, and that comes at a price, the price being in this case Ruben’s job.
We’ll see where we go, if it’s Steve Cooper, Marti Cifuentes or Ryan Mason I’ll keep my powder dry, but in the words of Jim McVie on Twitter, if we are “appointing some Serb that was manager of Dogshitspor a decade ago” I won’t be hanging out the black and amber bunting any time soon. I’m always surprised that people that I don’t expect, will occasionally read my blogs, George Honeyman’s representation reached out to me a couple of years ago to thank me for what I wrote (humble brag) and I’ve had others. So if Ruben you’re reading this or somebody you know is, you did good, you worked your absolute backside off and got a shambling mess of a team over the line, there’ll be things you want to improve and learn from, but I’m pretty sure you’re going to get a good job next and you deserve it. Thank you for keeping us up, and get yourself on a beach somewhere and enjoy it.
As for us lot, it’s going to be another bumpy ride this summer. The owner has probably just used his last move that he gets before the majority really turn and it needs to be a good one. Recruitment is going to be massive and we need to do it a damned sight earlier than last season. I can’t say I’m hugely confident of all of the above but then when can you truly ever say that as a fan of Hull City football club? Have a nice summer everyone (third time is a charm), let’s hope there’s some sweet new kits, and we have the bodies to fill them. Up the batshit mental tigers and thanks for reading and your kind comments this season.
Pete