Hull City 1 - West Bromwich Albion 0

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Ratings submitted so far: 8

Brendan Clegg:

Another away game and another loss to a side who were, for the most part, utterly dreadful.

A slight surprise in the starting 11 with Molumby missing out and Styles playing in the centre with Taylor coming in.

Not sure if that was injury/illness or tactical but I think you’d have to say that the result was probably our best and most balanced midfield pairing of the season for 30 minutes… if slightly unexpected.

We started on top and stayed there - Styles moving the ball much quicker, Diakite doing his job sensibly and everyone else looking effective.

In that 30 minute spell we moved through the lines quickly and both Price and Grant missed sitters that you have to take. Both good moves that came from us attacking with energy and at pace. We even managed to sustain it after a lengthy stoppage.

It started to go a bit wrong when Bielik nearly git caught over-playing, dribbled himself into a 50-50 and got done with a nasty one. He came off for Mepham and we lost a bit of his passing and leadership.

As the game petered out to injury time, Phillips gave a penalty by super-manning at a defensive corner. It seemed daft thing to do.

I’m not blaming Wildsmith for the penalty but McBurnie scuffed it down the middle without any power at all. We trudged off a goal down despite being much the better team.

I thought Hull were so bad that we still had a chance to win it.

However… Hull came out second half much deeper and we seemed to barely get out of gear. Mason basically said as much after the game that this was deliberate - we felt we had loads of time and the chances would come.

No! We needed to get bloody after them.

Instead we had maybe 20-25 minutes of frustration, of stupid hoofs from the back, of zero movement of playing through the lines.

Campbell (on a yellow and getting annoyed at how bad the ref was) and Price made way for Maja and Gilchrist.

What felt like Gilchrist’s first action was to get sent off for a slightly late and slightly high tackle. Nobody really appealed for the red… I’m not sure anyone even thought it was a booking but then it was done.

Despite it being do-or-die, there was no momentum, no going for Broke with Dike… we seemed to accept the 1-0 loss and didn’t do anything creative to turn it around.

An 8th away loss in a row in a league this bad just really isn’t acceptable. Sometimes it might be luck, bad refereeing or individual mistakes but the reality is we have a head coach who just doesn’t know how to get results.

There were a good 30 minutes of football when we were a goal down with 11 men and we did not lay a glove on Hull. Their keeper did not make a save. Hull ship goals and are not very good. Our players looked utterly rudderless again. I did not see our ‘principles’ other than to run around a bit, wallop anything in our defensive third and hope something might happen.

It will not change for as long as he is in charge. It is nothing personal but there is nothing to attract people to games; there is no promise or encouraging development. If the board and club accept this coasting mediocrity then fans will continue to stop coming… as fans our standards and ambitions seem to be higher. This squad is better than the results and league position.

I thought in early November it was worth ending this experiment to give someone a fighting chance of the playoffs. By the time we act it’ll be beyond us and this will have been an absolutely wasted opportunity in a crap league.

Get him gone!

• Wildsmith - 6 did alright
• Campbell - 6 Giving his all. Is a bit anyone-esque in how unorthodox he looks.
• Phillips - 5 Coasted through but a stupid penalty to concede and his passing was awful at times.
• Bielik - 6 We’ll miss him. Looked crocked.
• Taylor - 4 Looks like a carthorse. Legs have gone.. so slow to move it forward or run with it.
• MJ - 6 bright in patches… try him through the middle
• Diakite - 6 really good first half, 2nd half he made too many errors as hull sat deeper and he had more ball
• Styles - 7 Zip, aggression, passed it well mostly.
• Grant - 6 Kept his form up with energy and effort but quality let him down.
• Price - 5 his legs and running are good but bad miss and disappeared after their goal
• Heggebø- 6 battled with very little service

• Mepham - 5 a couple of silly flicks and backheels as well as brain dead fouls. Not taking it seriously
• Maja - 5 I don’t know what the injury was but he looks done at this level. He can’t run and isn’t strong enough. Poor.
• Gilchrist - Looked very harsh on him.
• Molumby and SIJ - Why? Bizarre subs.