Hull return to Manchester City looking for no repeat of on-pitch team talk

28 November 2009 01:18
Hull return to Eastlands on Saturday for the first time since Phil Brown's angry, on-pitch team talk there on Boxing Day. The 5-1 defeat at Manchester City was the turning point as they went from European challengers to relegation battlers.[LNB]'We have learned our lessons from that game last season,' says Hull's Brazilian  playmaker Geovanni, who wants to take revenge against his former club. 'The past is in the past.' [LNB]Brown losing the dressing room and Hull being 'found out' are the lazy, oft-repeated explanations for the post-Eastlands slide. A closer analysis shows these theories are over-simplistic.[LNB] Return to the scene of the crime: Brown[LNB]Tactically, they made a drastic change after the Eastlands nightmare, going from one extreme to the other. The Manchester City game struck fear into them and they switched from gung-ho attacking to a defensive mentality, prioritizing clean sheets.[LNB]Before Boxing Day, they had fearlessly committed men forward and used a 4-3-3  to devastating effect. After Manchester City ruthlessly exposed that formation, Hull decided that - with 27 points already on the board - they should start  taking a no-risks, ugly, safety-first approach and grind out the points - often with a lone striker - to take them over the safety line.[LNB]But, defensively, they were not good enough to hold out for 90 minutes on many  occasions, leading to narrow defeats, meaning a painful slog to get to the 35 points that eventually kept them up.[LNB]They will face Manchester City again today having, ironically, returned to their old positive style in the past three games - since new chairman Adam Pearson's arrival.  [LNB]Hull had started this season in a similar vein to the end of the last campaign.  [LNB]But, with Brown under pressure, Pearson came in and Hull went back to their old  ways of 'having a go'. A 2-1 win over Stoke was followed by a 3-3 thriller last  Saturday against West Ham then a 3-2 victory against Everton in midweek.  [LNB]But, having been ripped apart using open, positive tactics at Eastlands last season, the big question is whether Hull will have the bottle to stick to their guns on Saturday. Unsurprisingly, Brown decided not to face the press yesterday.[LNB]But his assistant Brian Horton indicated that they will continue their recent approach, saying: 'That's what we've done in our last three games. When you  play open, you are going to win some and you're going to lose some. That's what  we've chosen to do.' [LNB]Discussing Brown's team talk last season, former Manchester City manager Horton  added: 'It will probably stay in the history of football, what he did. But is  that a bad thing? It's a good thing. If he chooses to do it again, why not? Don' t we need characters in the game? [LNB]'We just felt the players had let us down. They are big boys. I've been in  worse situations than that.[LNB]'I've done crazier things than that. I nearly killed a kid with a bottle one day. I threw it across the dressing room and hit him right in the temple.  [LNB]'When I was a player, Alan Mullery threatened to run me over once - and he meant it, by the way. We (Brighton) won the last four games and stayed up so he said it was good motivation.'  Geovanni wants strike role as he hopes to erase the memories of that teamtalkHULL CITY FC

Source: Daily_Mail