Not the result I wanted, but we played superbly and earned a hard-fought point against a side that is pushing for playoffs. To be honest, I was, again, agnostic heading into this game as we did beat Millwall, who were 5th, last week; however, we have not won on the road since 2 January. I really hope our away drought does not continue until the end of the season; I am going to the rest of them.
Before the game, I realised that we have lost fewer games compared with Blackburn and, also, scored more goals. Yet, we are, now, nine places apart and ten points separate us. I suppose they have won more than us, but if we turned those draws into wins, we would be up there.
I am annoyed with the amount of injuries that we have; Alfie Jones did not turn up, and neither did Ryan Longman. So our injury list looks like this: Arron Connolly, Oscar Estupinan, Benjamin Tetteh, Cyrus Christie and two have just joined. Most of those are attackers, so our attack is not the best at the moment. This can not happen next season and if we want to push for promotion, Rosenior must work out who has had the least amount of game time, get rid of them and bring in new players who have spent most of their career on the pitch.
Despite the amount of players that are missing, according to LiveScore, we were in a 4-4-2 formation and we made three changes to the starting line-up; Adama Traore, who scored the winner last week, came in for Malcolm Ebiowei; Harry Vaughan, an academy player, replaced Dimitrios Pelkas and Callum Elder replaced Alfie Jones. That meant our starting eleven was: Karl Darlow, in goal; Jacob Greaves, Sean McLoughlin, Lewie Coyle and Callum Elder, as the back four; Jean Seri, Regan Slater, Allahyar Sayyadmanesh and Harry Vaughan, as the middle four and Ozan Tufan and Adama Traore were up front. Our bench consisted of: Greg Docherty; Malcolm Ebiowei, who I am unsure about; Dimitrios Pelkas; Xavier Simons; Matt Ingram; Ryan Woods, who I want to see more of, and Alfie James Taylor, who is another young academy player. I can’t wait until we have a full, strong squad that can push for promotion; it seems we are missing players every week and it is hard for Rosenior.
The first period was not the best for us and it was Blackburn who started off as the better side and they should have taken the lead many times. In the 33rd minute, Dolan should have put Rovers ahead; Diaz’s pass found him 12 yards out, but he somehow shot wide with just the keeper to beat. After this, they had another chance, but Morton’s shot was deflected wide and that was the end of the first half.
It was not a great half to watch as a Hull fan, but there were times when we created some decent chances and we did well at the back. Also, we are improving at playing out from the back; however, we somehow end up going back to the keeper and starting again. It is going to take some time until we can get the hang of it. Nonetheless, the second half was much better and both teams battled it out. We controlled it for 30 minutes and then Blackburn took control and we had to do some serious defending to prevent us from conceding.
Straight from the restart, we were on the attack; Slater received the ball from Traore, he drove into the box, but he dragged his shot wide. We always do that; we have a half where we struggle to create anything and then we look like a completely fresh team in the second. If we played at a high level consistently, we would have a better chance at winning comfortably, instead of scoring one and then dropping off for the remainder of the match.
Then, we should have scored seven minutes after that; Jean Seri lobbed the ball into the box, where it found Sayyadmanesh, who outmuscled Pickering, and he dragged his shot wide, which was inches away from sending the crowd behind the goal crazy; I even started celebrating. It was so frustrating to watch the ball slowly trickle past the goal and if he made better contact with the ball, it would have gone in. Creating the chances does not seem to be a problem, but finishing them does.
Shortly after this, we had another dangerous opportunity. In the 63rd minute, Traore received the ball from the corner of the box, he drove to the D and took a shot, which went just wide. All he needed to do was put more curl on it and he would have repeated what he did last week.
We were a bit lucky towards the end of the game; the hosts had a lot of opportunities, but their chances were all put over the bar and Darlow was there to snuff out the threat, like he always is. He has been the signing of the year; we have lost twice and kept four clean sheets. One of the defeats was to top of the league Burnley, but we could do nothing about it, though.
So, it is another draw away from home and are my brother and I going to see another win? I bloody hope so. Thankfully, we are only paying for the tickets or we would be spending a lot of money for the same results. Hopefully Acun keeps the free travel going for next season so that we have the opportunity to see more wins.
This was a cracking game of football and we can take a lot of positives away from it, especially watching Vaughan. He was a star player today, he reminds me of Kean Lewis-Potter, and I think Rosenior should keep him in the main squad–he played better than some of the more experienced players. Nonetheless, we have four games left until the end of the season and I do not see us going up or down. We are currently 15th in the table, 12 points are still available and we are 10 points away from playoffs. Mathematically we can still do it, but I do not think we will. We need to focus on next season and with luck, have a strong finish to the season.