Hull City’s fortunes turned full circle on Tuesday night, going from performing well with little reward, to pinching a scarcely deserved point with a hugely disappointing performance.

Some credit must go to the players, who stuck to their task in a largely forgettable game, and eventually crafted two goals through the excellent Stephen Hunt to wrestle a point back along the M62, and hand the horrible Gary Megson his P45.

Hull City’s defeat to Manchester United followed in a similar vein to previous efforts against the big teams this season; with excellent going unrewarded points-wise. It was great to see the Tigers trying to play in a positive fashion against the champions, and City caused the visitors problems at times, creating a number of excellent chances, and being denied a good penalty-kick shout in the first half.

So, what to make of it? Clearly the major lesson to Phil Brown is to keep playing in an aggressive, attacking manner. Unless we’re away against the top teams, then 4-4-2 looks like the way to go. None of our strikers look comfortable in a lone striker role, and we never look like scoring.

There are far more disheartening ways to lose three-nil than Hull City’s defeat to Arsenal on Saturday night. The tigers were well beaten in the end, with a slick Arsenal team ripping City apart towards the end of the game, but much of the encounter was a tight, if slightly dull affair, as City defended in numbers and frustrated the Gunners.

Phil Brown fielded a 4-5-1 formation again, and in many ways it worked, as City packed the midfield, denying their hosts space in the final third of the pitch. Arsenal’s talented, but moody team grew more frustrated as the half wore on, Samir Nasri highlighting the home side’s rancour with a petulant trod on Richard Garcia’s foot. The Aussie’s reaction didn’t do him any favours either. I don’t like to see people trying to get others a red card, and the ref handled that situation well.

TC Q+A (with D-ru)
D-ru’s asked a couple of questions over the past weeks, so it’s only fair I have a bash at answering them:

1. People continue to call Hull "resurgent" or whatever. I'm looking at the table and I still see us right in the relegation battle still. We've played 1 more game then everyone at the bottom as well.

I agree. I’ve said in this blog several times that we shouldn’t really be getting carried away with a few wins (as good as they were). Particularly when you look at the coming games, there’s a very good chance we could be back in the bottom three come the New Year. That’s not being negative, just realistic.

There are several ways of looking at Hull City’s 0-0 draw with Blackburn. Two points dropped against relegation rivals? A point gained against a dogged team who did a nice job on keeping the tigers tethered? Or just two rubbish teams who couldn’t produce the required quality of play without their respective playmakers. I would tend to side with the third of the arguments, although to describe the two teams as rubbish is perhaps a tad unfair.

Whatever, City were well short of the standard of recent performances, largely down to the absence of Bullard, whose loss will prove pivotal in the coming weeks. City face the daunting prospect of playing Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham and Man Utd (twice) among their next six league games, with only the trip to Bolton offering a degree of respite.

A week is a long time in football and politics, so we are told. So just how long is the next six weeks going to be for Hull City fans? That’s the period of time Jimmy Bullard is set to be out of action for the Tigers after a bizarre injury sustained in Saturday’s numbing defeat to Aston Villa.

City just put in a bad shift. They were second best all over the pitch, and Villa never looked in any trouble throughout the 90 minutes. As I’ve said before, this City team is not good enough to get results at this level without playing somewhere approaching their best. They were poor on Saturday and were well beaten. It’ll happen again this season, but isn’t anything to be too despondent about. If such performances become a regular occurrence, then questions will rightly be asked. Hopefully they won’t, and City can get back to the stirring performances that led to a four match unbeaten run.

Just a couple of comments I thought I’d reply to that interested me. If you want to pick me up on anything in my blogs feel free! I’m a big lad I can take it..

Mike didn’t really ask, just said:
“You're not still worried about staying up are you? C'mon, TC, we're going to Europe.