To Hull and back

Andy Munro finds scant consolation in Blues’ 2-0 defeat at Hull.

It’s typical Blues that one of our least impressive games of the season comes a week before our derby game against a Grealish-inspired Villa.

It was good to see the return of Davis for an hour (with Gary Gardner unavailable next Sunday) but that apart there were few bright points in a flat performance. It’s difficult to put a finger on it but maybe the midweek victory over the Robins took more out of the team than was apparent at the time.

Early on Blues had a chance or two and one thing is certain, and that is Jutkiewicz badly needs a goal to restore his confidence. This, of course, has a knock on effect on Che Adams, who must currently feel that he has the complete goalscoring weight on his shoulders.

Admittedly Hull have two talented wingers but they certainly troubled us more down the flanks than we did them. To make it worse, Jarrod Bowen used to be on Villa’s books but on the plus side, he joined Hull City from Hereford United and now has a multi-million pound valuation, proving the bargains are out there. I say this to emphasise what Garry Monk could do with half of a twenty million pound fee for Che Adams in the close season with the sort of judgement he seems to display as opposed to Messrs Zola and Redknapp, who seemed to think money was no object in going for the low hanging footballing fruit.

It was surprising given our lacklustre performance that both Vassell and Klefenbeld were left on the bench but maybe that’s because the manager has next week’s derby in his mind’s eye and felt that this would be just moving the deck chairs on the Titanic given our lacklustre performance. In truth, our record at Hull City is as abysmal as our record at Bristol City is decent so maybe it’s all about footballing ley lines.