And your starter for 11…

Have the wheels started to drop off the fans-of-Peter-Taylor bandwagon following the heady days of May 2005? Sure enough, some sections of the Tiger Nation are starting to question whether the manager has reached the heights of his ability for City, with the club hovering in the bottom eight and the players seemingly struggling to help make progress towards safety. After the reports of City’s unlucky defeat against Cardiff City, the naysayers came out from their little holes and waved their pitiful little flags of despair on the pages of the Hull Daily Mail.

Accusations of players being played out of position, some players not being given a chance and even rumours of training ground disagreements have surfaced as evidence to why Taylor is supposed to have taken City as far as he can. I don’t buy it, not for one minute. 12 months ago, Taylor’s stock was as high as it could be, yet now, with City not riding the roller-coaster of success any more; it seems that some of the fans are taking the opportunity to put the knife in. Are they real City fans?

The true City fan knows that some of the players were playing League 2 football a couple of years ago, and make allowances for this fact. Yet some of more recent converts to the Tiger Nation, used to nothing but City winning, are not making the same allowances. In the other divisions, City were a big fish in small ponds, now they’re on the bigger stage and are nothing special in terms of size.

At the start of the season Taylor (the fans favourite) and Adam Pearson (the chairman) always said their aim was simply to survive in this new division. However, there were a section of fans that thought otherwise. ‘Top half’, some said. ‘Mid table comfort,’ others hoped. This optimism, well meant though it was, has created a sense of failure at this point in the season, but failure of what? There are still plenty of matches to go and City isn’t in the position the likes of Derby or Crewe are in. We were never going to be like Reading or Sheffield Utd.

Although the majority of football fans the country over are fickle in their support of their club, it always seems the City faithful are more fickle than most. Instant success was never going to be likely for City. Much talk was made of signings City was going to make, Dennis Wise for one. A lot of the gossip failed to acknowledge how City -although fairly well off- would never choose to pay the higher wages of such players, especially as we know none of the players currently earn more than about £3K. Why break a sensible wage structure simply to bring in a ‘name’?

Admittedly, the worst spate of injuries I can remember at City wrecked the management’s plans, with Ashbee, Coles and McPhee all out for the season. Each of these could well have made the difference to City’s final position come May, but the manager has to make the best use of what is available, adapting and adjusting all the time.

I firmly think that City are effectively all but safe at the moment, despite the very difficult run-in to the end of the season. The likes of Crewe, Millwall and Brighton are unlikely, given past form, to be able to make up the points they require to survive. Although it’s not pretty, a point here and a point there will be enough to ensure that come next August, City will be in the Championship. However, if the final match of the season sees City relegated, then that is the time to start the inquest, not while the season is still in progress.