Brilliant Win Vs Hull City

Yesterday saw Hull City make the trip down to the not so sunny St Andrews in order to contest a very valuable 3 points for both sides. Fortunately, it was the Blues’ who came out with the glory and in my humble opinion, it was really well deserved.

Now, you get teams like Real Madrid or even Watford last year, who have an average squad but one or two class players manage to pull you through. I feel that we are the opposite of this and it showed yesterday. We are a very strong unit where despite a few players having more obvious skills, everyone does their own individual job in a competent manner.

Yesterday, I watched the game, and I must say I was very impressed. Not only with the performance, but with how well they bounced back after two recently disappointing results against Sheffield Wednesday and QPR. It shows character to be able to continue with a game plan and execute it after such poor performances. The players and the management showed that they are not giving up on this play off push without a massive fight.

I also noticed how well our players went into their respective shapes, both upon attacking and defending. When we attacked, players were willing to get forward to support Donaldson and Toral, which meant that early crosses could catch Hull City out because there were plenty of blue men to aim for. I also liked how well we did defensively. Toral and Donaldson both dropped and soaked up the initial pressure. Then Maghoma and Cotterill tucked in superbly to help out their full backs, before the likes of Kieftenbeld tracked any runners. I was delighted how structured we appeared to be and also how hard we worked. Work ethic won us the game.

The one tiny improvement that I think we need to work on in future matches is defending on set pieces. They hit the post and the bar from crosses and we weren’t able to track various players. This is a worry as it should be a routine defensive strategy. However, with practice it can be easily sorted on the training ground, I just thought I’d flag it as a minor point.

Overall, I thought that we played as 11 men rather than as individuals. We worked hard for each other and I think this is what won us the game. A really pleasing display and one that I would hope spurs us to kick on and gather a run of good results and performances together.