It was another loss at home and after the 2-0 loss to Sheffield Utd, Hull were expected to come back stronger.
We started off with a very strong squad however, they should have started with Dimitrios Pelkas instead of Tyler Smith because after seeing Pelkas play in the last game he looked really strong and he is very good at dribbling in between defenders. Other than that one change I think that squad was probably the strongest squad Arveladze has started with and once all of the injured players are back - including Traore, Sinik, M’Hand, Sayyadmanesh and Tetteh - I think we have the squad too, hopefully. get us into the top six.
The way we played in that game, I think, was the best we have played over the last few defeats despite the scoreline. We had lots of chances and we dominated possession throughout the game but we made so many mistakes and it is so frustrating to watch. The first two goals came from free kicks, one being a great shot and the other was due to some terrible defending from us in the box. The one thing that always happens to us is having the worst referees to referee our matches. I think they give everything against us and we are always, somehow, offside. I do not like making excuses but all the referees we have had have been poor.
Hull, this season, have not been very good at counter-attacking and they always end up either going backwards or giving the ball away. This was the case in this game. We always do too much passing and we never get the ball into the box. Clearly, if you get it into the box as much as possible you have more opportunities to score and if you do too many passes around the edge of the box then, eventually, you’ll lose the ball giving the opposing side an opportunity to counter-attack. Another thing we failed to do, once again, was passing the ball to players making runs. It is like we want to do it the hard way by passing around the defenders rather than through them.
Stoke’s third goal was an absolute beauty and at that point we gave up.
The major issue is our defending, we are too open and we do not mark or stay with players making runs. We also get scared and end up making stupid mistakes costing us goals.
For the upcoming games we really need to work on attacking, defending and not giving up when we go one or two nil down.
Our next game is Swansea away and I hope we can go back to winning again.