The last seven league games of the season in Hull City are all as big as the others. writes Peter Swan .
Sunday’s game between Huddersfield Town and Nottingham Forest was great in the relegation battle. Another defeat for Town kept them in the relegation zone and City with a point ahead of the game round during the week.
The tigers cannot afford to look over their shoulders or look for favors from other clubs. If you don’t win your games, you won’t survive. As simple as that.
City’s next opponent, Middlesbrough, is still a bad team, regardless of Saturday’s win in Stoke City. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be left in a seven game relegation battle.
Neil Warnock is a great appointment as Boro’s new manager. Each of the bottom seven or eight clubs would like to have him, especially given his track record of avoiding relegation. It wouldn’t have gotten cheap, but it practically guarantees safety, so it’s always worth the investment.
Meeting Middlesbrough on Thursday is a big game for obvious reasons, but I don’t think the season will be based on it. The weekly events will prove to be a determining factor in the city’s survival hunt.
To have a good chance of survival, the Tigers want to keep control over the past two or three games and have a few points in front of security so they can control their own destiny, which is crucial at the bottom of the game table.
If a team misses promotion, nothing will be worse for individual players financially. The descent is the opposite. As Ehab Allam mentioned last weekend, the relegation will in most cases lead to a 50 percent drop in City’s player wages. If that doesn’t throw her on the back, nothing will.
What I saw in City’s first half of the 3-3 Birmingham City draw was enough to suggest that Grant McCann should name an unchanged team at KCOM this week.
If City played against Middlesbrough for the first 60/70 minutes like in the first half on Saturday, they are safe enough. Unfortunately, the consistency this season was a big disadvantage. If you fix that, you are safe.
I can’t see them avoiding relegation, but I really hope they’ll prove otherwise.
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