Marked for Alexander Odegaard
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad16 Aug 2038
Paul Marshall damages knee ligaments — 33 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 33 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Player ratings16 Aug 2038
At 36 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.86 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Player ratings16 Aug 2038
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 25 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Squad16 Aug 2038
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Alexander Odegaard is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad16 Aug 2038
Ivor Pandur in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Hull City this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad16 Aug 2038
Ryan Giles falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Player ratings16 Aug 2038
A performance of 9.41 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Match14 Aug 2038
It finished 1‑0, and it was Isaiah Dada-Mascoll’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Hull City.
Player ratings16 Aug 2038
15 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad19 Jul 2038
Paul Marshall damages knee ligaments — 65 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 65 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad19 Jul 2038
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Market19 Jul 2038
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Hull City, and it is not being withdrawn.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad21 Jun 2038
Paul Marshall damages knee ligaments — 96 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 96 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad21 Jun 2038
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Hull City may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad21 Jun 2038
Ivor Pandur was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad21 Jun 2038
Words at Hull City training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Darko Gyabi is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Market21 Jun 2038
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Hull City know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Market21 Jun 2038
Hull City have let the market know Franco Vázquez can be had. No price in the advert, but everyone in the trade knows roughly what it says.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad3 May 2038
A one-man rearguard from Ivor Pandur
There were 15 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Squad3 May 2038
26 goals and a season average of 7.69 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
Player ratings3 May 2038
Two goals and a mark of 8.84 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings3 May 2038
Alexander Odegaard, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 8.88
A mark of 8.88 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Boardroom3 May 2038
The accounts make uncomfortable reading. Wages first and ambition second is the order of business at Hull City now.
Squad3 May 2038
435 appearances across 13 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
Player ratings3 May 2038
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.69 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Squad3 May 2038
“The easiest signature of my career.” Abdülkadir Ömür and Hull City agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Player ratings31 Aug 2037
Two goals and a mark of 8.88 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings31 Aug 2037
Mohamed Belloumi, 35, rolls back the years — 8.42
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.42 at 35, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Market31 Aug 2037
Ellis Lehane has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Hull City they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad31 Aug 2037
Enis Destan was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad31 Aug 2037
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad31 Aug 2037
Darko Gyabi falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Squad31 Aug 2037
The manager makes an example of Enis Destan
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Player ratings31 Aug 2037
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.35, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Boardroom3 Aug 2037
The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
Boardroom3 Aug 2037
The Hull City board call everybody in
Nothing has been announced and everybody understands what it means. A board that summons the whole football department on a Tuesday morning is a board that has stopped believing the problem will fix itself.
Squad3 Aug 2037
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Martín Zubimendi and Hull City agree another 2 years.
Squad3 Aug 2037
Enis Destan was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad3 Aug 2037
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Alexander Odegaard is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Market3 Aug 2037
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Hull City heard it as anything else.
Squad3 Aug 2037
Ryan Giles falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Boardroom3 Aug 2037
Wages eat 96% of everything Hull City earn
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Market3 Aug 2037
Ivor Pandur linked with a move away
The name of Ivor Pandur keeps appearing in other people's back pages. Hull City say nothing, which says plenty.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad22 Jun 2037
A knee injury of the worst kind for Simon Cunningham
24 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Hull City lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Boardroom22 Jun 2037
The scrutiny sharpens at Hull City
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Hull City is running low.
Squad22 Jun 2037
Lilian Bague: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Hull City have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Market22 Jun 2037
Only the photograph left for Briar Bateman
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Briar Bateman will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Hull City the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Boardroom22 Jun 2037
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Briar Bateman has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
Squad22 Jun 2037
Ivor Pandur in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Hull City this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.