Since December 2002, the KC Stadium has been home to a host of tremendous Hull City performances and lots of terrific results. Plenty of teams have left East Yorkshire battered and beaten, from bigger clubs like Everton, West Ham, Birmingham and Wolves to small ones like Morecombe, Boston, Macclesfield and Leeds. Despite those great victories, what the stadium has lacked thus far is a genuine scalp. Today that scalping arrived as a wonderful Tigers performance, the best at home in the Premier League and the best anywhere for over a year, put Manchester City to the sword. The world’s richest club (C) boast hundreds of millions of pounds worth of talent that they've overpaid for and seven substitutes who'd all walk into our team but they couldn't match our Tigers for desire, hard work, ability and just sheer guts.
Phil Brown named an unchanged team. City were second favourites anyway and by some distance but having named the same starting eleven who put so much into the game on Tuesday, no-one would have fancied them to take anything against Man City, who named two World Cup winners as substitutes! Given Patrick Vieira's input into the game they'd have been better off with Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst. Seyi Olofinjana replaced Bernard Mendy on the subs bench in our only change. Pity no-one told the guy who does the graphics for the scoreboard though!
We started superbly, just as we had on Tuesday. Right from the start, we put the ball into the feet of Altidore and JVoH and played off them with some success. For the first half hour, Altidore was unplayable. He outmuscled, outwitted and outfought Toure and Boyata. Toure was booked early on for chopping him down on the edge of the box as he charged goalwards. Boyata joined him in the book within twenty minutes pulling Altidore down as he raced away from him on the left wing. Altidore looks better with each performance, his first touch is reasonable, he uses his strength well and he can really move. What he's done well in the last month is improve his work off the ball, he's not drifting out of the game now, he's alert and he makes runs into good areas. All he's lacked so far is a goal and that came just after the half hour. Hull had been the better team throughout and won a corner and two free-kicks that Hunt wasted. From the second of those free-kicks, the ball was looped back into the box and Hesselink volleyed just wide with his left foot. Shortly after, George Boateng lashed a left footed half volley over the bar. Quite what George was thinking of I don't know. He never looks like scoring at the best of times, so shooting with his left foot is just stupid.
Man City had barely had a kick. Their only sniff of our goal came from a poor McShane back pass that threatened to set Tevez free on goal before Gardner outpaced him to win the ball back. We pressed them quickly and got in their faces. We moved the ball forward quickly and got men forward, forcing them backwards. When our goal came, it was well deserved. Boateng passed into Hesselink with his back to goal; he held the ball up calmly and knocked it into Altidore's path where our New York giant stroked a terrific finish into the bottom left hand corner. A first league goal has been a long time coming for Altidore but will hopefully be the first of many.
The goal woke up Man City and they started to put more pressure on us. Their movement was good, particularly Tevez, who drifted into space all over the pitch. Our weak point appears to be in behind McShane and they exploited it with good effect right on half time, Wayne Bridge latching onto a ball through and hitting a shot that Myhill was equal to. We went into the half time interval deservedly leading and having dominated for long periods. We were relatively untroubled at the back and Bo Myhill had only been tested once. Had our delivery into the box been a little better, we might even have gone in further ahead.
We started the second half in much the same manner as the first. Man City made mistake after mistake and we dominated the middle of the park. Hunt had the beating of Zabaleta and neither centre back could cope with Altidore. We failed to take advantage of the situations we created and a second goal appeared on the cards. Craig Fagan, until that point just as poor as Tuesday night, burst into life and ripped past Bridge on the right, winning a corner. The delivery was cleared to the edge of the area where the waiting George Boateng hit a stupendous left foot drive that almost broke the net.
The response from Man City was swift. Mancini replaced Ireland, so often our tormentor but utterly anonymous today, with Adam Johnson. Andy Dawson was booked for a crude challenge on Johnson and we had to defend a series of corners, before and after our second goal. Everything was going swimmingly when we gave them a rather soft goal and a way back into the game. Myhill pushed Barry's shot around the post and the resulting far post corner wasn't cleared and as it pinged around, Adebayor lashed it into the net. Even the most optimistic Tigers fan feared the worst at that point. City were visibly tiring and Man City had renewed hope as well as introducing Patrick Vieira and later Martin Petrov from the bench. We put in a lot of work to defend the lead; every defender and midfielder was heroic. Phil Brown had to make changes, the first being Amr Zaki on for Jozy Altidore who looked like he had cramp a he limped off. Zaki didn't make the same impression he has in his two previous appearances. He produced one terrific piece of play on the left wing and got a tame shot in from the right hand side of the penalty area but otherwise looked rather sluggish.
After a magnificent all-action 161 minutes of football this week, George Boateng finally had to take a backward step and was replaced by the returning Seyi Olofinjana. Boateng has covered every blade of grass on the KC turf this week, several times, and he's also covered the considerable amount of mud too. He's passed the ball, he's made lung bursting attacking runs, he's tracked runners, made dozens and dozens of tackles, pressed the ball and cajoled and encouraged performances from everyone of his teammates. He's been absolutely magnificent. Taking him off with 10 minutes to play was a brave move by Phil Brown but Oily didn't let him down. He made some crucial interceptions and won headers in our box. Our final change saw Kevin Kilbane replace Hesselink. Big Jan had his best game in a City shirt. He played his part in some terrific flowing moves, held the ball up and laid it off and challenged for everything in the air. Despite his size, he's at his best when the ball is played into his feet. The atmosphere at the KC was as good as it's been in a long time. It was nice to hear the fans joining in and singing the names of the players who've put in a terrific effort. I tried to get a chorus of "There's only one Kilbane" going but surprisingly, it didn't catch on.
The last 20 minutes should have been torture but Man City played right into our hands. They spent most of the time launching long balls forward, all of which where repelled with ease, usually by either of our superb centre halves, Mouyokolo or Gardner. We were well disciplined for the most part and worked hard not to concede too many free-kicks or corners. Zaki and Hunt ensured that when we cleared the ball forward, we generally held onto it and ran the clock down. We might even have clinched the game but Fagan failed miserably to feed the ball through to Cairney who would have ran clear on goal. The young man had another fine game. His delivery was much better than Hunt’s; he was cool on the ball and showed good awareness of what was around him. He mishit a pass or two and was caught in possession when Fagan played terrible balls to him but otherwise worked tirelessly and as well as being a solid attacking influence, kept a terrific defensive position alongside Boateng. We held on to win the game with few scares. The biggest probably came when Myhill slipped while attempting a regular catch and had to watch as the ball, which could have gone anywhere, floated past the post.
We end this week with 5 points from three home games, which was more than anyone dared dream of last Saturday morning. It is still incredibly frustrating that we only took a point against Wolves, given that our defence has been magnificent in the two games since. Both centre halves have been dominant in the air, took no chances with clearances and cover the ground very quickly. Mouyokolo looks a very good prospect and makes few mistakes. Gardner has recovered superbly from a very uncharacteristic performance against Wolves. Dawson continues to be consistently unspectacular but solid and like Tuesday, made a number of terrific interceptions today. McShane looks beatable on the right due to his lack of pace but we don't really have an alternative. Mendy and Zayatte are both more athletic but also erratic.
After two identical attendances, today's head count was 24959. I don't know where the extra two came from but it makes a KC record attendance for a City game. Home has been very good for us this season so far with all 5 wins coming at the KC and having lost only 3 of 13 games. Wednesday's opponents Blackburn have a decent home record too and are sitting in mid-table because of it. Wednesday would be a wonderful time to pick up a first away win of the season. If we can't do that, then at least avoiding defeat at Blackburn and West Ham would see us sitting reasonably pretty. Once we've played Arsenal at home, our run-in is about as good as we could have wished for so there is definitely the opportunity for us to stay in the division.
A week ago, it was difficult to see how we could possibly stay up. What's happened since has been quite remarkable. We've seen some of our senior pro's stand up and take responsibility, we've seen some of the younger guys put down a real marker in terms of the quality that they can produce and we've seen our manager approach three matches positively. It will be much appreciated if we can go to Blackburn on Wednesday night and be just as brave, just as positive and even more tight-fisted.
Ratings: Myhill 6, McShane 6, Dawson 7, Gardner 8, Mouyokolo 8, Fagan 6, Hunt 7, Boateng 9 (Olofinjana), Cairney 7, Altidore 8 (Zaki), Venegoor of Hesselink 7 (Kilbane).