The sudden rise and deep decline of Hull City

By: Rob | May 12th, 2009

So big story of last night was that Newcastle thumped Boro after a shakey start which moves them out of the relegation zone on goal difference. The team that it plunges into the dropzone are Hull City. What a rollercoatser season they’ve had.

Rewind back to August, and lets be honest, none of us gave them a chance. I predicted they’d go down bottom, and no-one bothered to argue. I felt a bit bad for them to be honest.

But as the season started, we appeared very foolish indeed.

They kicked off with a win over Fulham, which seemed like a big thing. They already had as many wins as Derby had the season before (we all worried a bit that they’d just be another Derby), but still the best was yet to come.

It didn’t come right away though, a draw against Blackburn was followed by a 5-0 loss at Wigan and me claiming that the bubble had burst.

Then, they beat Arsenal. Arsenal who last season spent the whole first half of the season on top of the league. The win gave them a lot of confidence undoubtedly, and they carried on winning. After a 3-0 hammering of West Brom (who I fancied to stay up. funnily enough) they were joint top of the league having lost just one match (the hammering at Wigan) in the first nine.

We’d seen it before of course – Reading’s first season in the Premier League was marked by them climbling high up the table, before crashing in their second season. Hull however have done it all on fast forward.

But the bubble burst have Hull have just one win in the last 19 matches, and Phil Brown has in the space of half a season gone from looking like a genius to hopelessly out of his depth.

What the hell has gone wrong?

Its fair to say that this season has been pretty unpredictable at times, but such a fall from grace is pretty spectacular. The only thing I can really consider is that Hull have only one of playing, and once teams figured it out – or stopped taking them lightly – they were in real trouble. Perhaps they would have been better off making slow progress around the middle of the league, rather than flying up the table to be knocked back down. Mind you, if anything is going to save them (the task is now score more points than Newcastle do) its that early season form.

If they do go down, they need not be too depressed, they lived the dream, albeit rather briefly, and if you look back at their history, just ten years ago they were struggling in the fourth tier of English Football. Hull have given hope to fans of lower league teams. One day maybe our boys will go on a spectacular run and be – even briefly – at the summit of English Football. For that, Hull City, I salute you.