Hull Must Stop Early Goals

Saturday saw Hull City concede after only seventy five seconds, something hat has become all too familiar this season.

Stoke’s goal left the Tigers chasing the game from only the second minute and although they attempted to fight back, they had immediately given themselves a mountain to overcome.

Unfortunately, the goal conceded against Stoke is something that has happened all too often this season. Preston breached the Tigers defence after only forty-nine seconds, Watford after two minutes in the League Cup and Burnley after five minutes.

In all three fixtures, City went on to suffer defeats after making an already difficult task much harder. With several incidents having occurred this season, you must ask yourself, what is the reason for this?

One possibility could be a lack of concentration. With the game having only just kicked of, are the player’s minds focused somewhere else? If that was to be the case, surely Parkinson and the management staff should adopt a ‘no nonsense’ approach to defending and tell the defenders to knock the ball away at every opportunity.

Although City have suffered with injuries, especially in defence, you could argue that these changes have affected their understanding. City fans seem to always have a scapegoat and at the moment, that unfortunate tag falls on the shoulders of Michael Turner, but to blame him for our defensive frailties is harsh. Saturday`s game saw Sam Ricketts blocked off from his marker, allowing Stoke City defender Danny Higginbottom to comfortably head in from six yards out despite being surrounded by Hull players. The defence must realise to pick up other players other than just their own if they can see the situation warrants it,

Whatever the reason, City must, at all costs, make sure that their goal stays intact for at least the first twenty minutes at Carrow Road in six days time. The away trip to Norwich City looks daunting enough without conceding an early goal.

Parkinson, speaking on the Official Website after the Stoke game, indicated his feelings towards conceding another early goal,

‘It was a very disappointing start for us,’ he said.

We knew going into the game we were playing against a good side with a lot of good players with Championship and Premiership experience.

‘To start the way we did made it a very difficult afternoon for ourselves because one thing about Tony Pulis’s teams is that they are always hard to beat away from home but giving them a goal start really made life difficult for ourselves.’

Conceding early goals on a consistent basis is one of the signs of a team facing relegation. City find themselves in that unfortunate league position, but if the defence continue to concede sloppy early goals, we will soon be in those relegation spots.

With six days to work with the defence on the training ground, we must see a significant improvement in our defence when we visit Norwich.