Saint Garrett

Once RS is fit, and I’m sure that will take quite a while, it’ll be 6 of Downes, Charles, Smallbone, Stu, Alcaraz, Arma Sulemana Stewart Adams Fraser Edozie. Id guess the strongest on paper would probably be Downes, Smallbone, Stu, Arma, Sulemana, Stewart. with the others subbing in. I did wonder at the weekend whether Charly playing RW was a trial in prep for Stewart being fit, Good problems to have though in this league….

Hasn’t Lyanco picked up a long term injury? Or did I imagine that,

Seems like a logical appointment, don’t know much about him, but if Martin wants him then fair enough. Welcome to the club

Thats where he was playing when we kept losing. He doesn't offer much in there tbh.

Downes really underwhelmed me when he first joined, came with a big reputation and was expecting him to come in and dominate, he didn’t. He now looks fit, and settled and now is probably first in the team sheet.

Anyone know if you can buy tickets and pick them up in Preston? Mate is thinking of coming…

Nice and easy...the conga.... "Do do do, KYLE WALKER PETERS"

Another big game, they all are. Couple of days in Manchester for me, really looking forward to it. I’d probably take a draw, but play well and we’ve got every chance of winning.

He’ll get a lot more time than the avg manager IMO, due to the complete rebuild the club are doing, don’t forget Wilcox is also new this summer. Whether it’s Martin, or someone else, it’ll still be the same style of football, so you might as well just keep Martin as long as there is progress. Ultimately we don’t know how this all ends, but I’m fully behind it. Life’s too short to whine about something that hasn’t happened yet, but I also appreciate others have a different mindset and that’s up to them,

You keep banging on about Sunderland and Leicester...Martin even said they were miles off it in those 2 games. The Sunderland result he takes full responsibility for, he said he shouldn't have picked certain players. We then had a really poor game against Leicester. We have been far better against Leeds, Stoke and Rotherham, which took some balls after losing 4 in a row playing against the in form team in the league in Leeds. I'm not saying everything he does it perfect, it clearly isn't but if you can't see that we will undoubtedly improve as the season goes on, then I'm not sure I can help.

Leicester are coming from a very similar style (Rodgers), we're coming from 4 years of playing high press non-possession football, and then 9 months of absolute confused shite under Jones and then Selles. Surely you can understand how that can take a a bit more time to develop?

Anyone know any decent pubs in Hull? Haven't been since Wanyama scored that belter and think we went to a Wetherspoons which I would rather not do again...!

There is a difference between 3 or 4 learning how we play, and the whole squad learning how we play. Clearly thats why he wanted to sign Downes, Manning, THB, the rest of the city kids too. This is a long term thing, this isn't going to happen in a few months, but the club is working on a long term plan. This is about building a club including the academy sides, playing in the same way and building a side that will go up and stay up. The goal is still top 10 of the premier league.

Tbf, you had to be a STH, and go on the website and buy a ticket, there were spare seats there so guessing they didn't sell them all. And with all due respect, proof was in the pudding last season at Swansea. Look at the last 9 games of last season. We have a budget to be able to offer him a good chance of promotion, whether it takes a season for us to build this style, but wouldn't be surprised if we went on a similar run towards the end of this season. And when it works we look really bloody good IMO. He's said we're not perfect at the moment, and we're still making mistakes, he highlighted the 20 min period at the start of the second half against Rotherham where the players did the opposite of what was asked of them. We found it too easy and ended up labouring a bit. It then took one moment from their Goal kick and it's in the back of our net, we will get better at that, but ultimately if that same game was played 100 times we'd win 98/99 of them. But atm, all of our stats and metrics (KPI's if you will) are heading in the right direction. They won't win a game on their own, but will give us the best chance to.

Also went…Think his main point is we are starting to see it in the last 3 games, and really should have got 9 points from last 3 games, Rotherham was a freak result which we should have won by 3 or 4. He was really impressive, stated we will get better as the season goes on but it takes time, the players are slowly learning and will get to the point where they are really confident doing what they need to, but he will be stubborn. And this is the way the club is going, so if you want to see a bunch of lads sprinting around after the ball, flying into tackles and “getting it forward” you’re going to be disappointed. I thought it was really great evening, I’m obviously aware this was a PR exercise mainly, but a really worthy one. Martin has done it at his last 2 clubs, and he wants to be really open with the fans. We’re in really good hands with Wilcox and Martin IMO. But fans will have to have patience and not groan at every pass backwards etc, there is method to it.

Think it's more likely Arma plays in the position he's excelled in, and Adams or Mara will start. I'm expecting Stewart to be on the bench. Can't see Martin moving Arma though.

He's done much more of that since he's come back into the side. but I'd say it's actually him that seems to slow it down, rather than the tactics. Teammates are shouting at him to move the ball quicker. He also needs to not start trying to take it round 5 players in the LB position, no benefit at all, I can't imagine Martin is asking him to do that.

Look at how awful and boring that football is. Why can't they "GET IT FORWARD" instead of passing to each other, would be much more enjoyable.

Is Arma injured then?

Fair enough on the auto promotion (I never expected us to be top 2 this season if I'm honest), but a point a Hull would be fine. To get in the playoffs you've needed 69, 75, 77, 70, 74, 75, 80, 74, 78 across the last 9 seasons, (avg of 74.66 points - an avg of 1.62ppg). We've started slowly, which I think most level headed fans expected us to given the turmoil and complete change in way of playing. We've currently got 1.55 ppg. In my opinion, we'll get stronger as the season goes on. We have 35 games to play, and 105 points to play for. We should need about 1.65ppg on avg for the rest of the season to get into the playoffs based on the avg of last 9 seasons. That doesn't require us to win every game. Clearly our home form needs to improve, and we need to be getting wins away from home, but to be saying it looks "less and less likely" if we lose away to Hull is just daft IMO.

There is a difference between constantly chopping and changing manager and style etc, to tweaking line ups because of injuries or tactical reasons. We can't play the same 11 players every game.

We can’t do it…yet… I think in time the players get more used to it, know when to play and when to not, it look Guardiola a lot of money and time to imbed his style, and that was a team that already played in a similar way. He’s also had 1 transfer window where the larger focus was out rather than in. I completely agree with the majority of what you’re saying, but, IMO, I’ll be judging at the end of the season. Until then he’s got my full backing. I’m fed up with chopping and changing constantly

Barcelona team late 00's was one of the best teams the world has ever seen. Similar to City more recently. They absolutely kill teams by relentlessly passing and tiring out the opposition. That's clearly the direction we are going in, but obviously at a far inferior level, but those foundations should still work. Clearly we are still very early in building these foundations and we've far from perfected it. There is no doubt that we need more quality and potency in the attacking areas but we are definitely heading in the right direction IMO. We need far more from the likes of Sulemana, Alcaraz, Adams. Arma has exceeded my expectations this season already, and looks very much comfortable at RW. We still have "the best striker in the division" to come in. It's highly likely that auto promotion is now gone, and I have to say I was never expecting that this season due to the turmoil. I say have some patience and enjoy the ride...

I've no idea if it's true, and I'm just speculating, but given we had all this chatter about us signing half of Swansea, and we ended up with a grand total of 0 of their players. my gut feeling is that they wouldn't play ball with us after Russell Martin deal animosity. Swans owner is known as a difficult bloke to deal with, but would explain why we didn't get Wood, Fulton, Grimes or Piroe. Grimes went as far as a medical too, and then signed a new contract at Swansea.

After international break supposedly…