Watford v Hull City: Keeping the band together a motivation for coach Liam Rosenior

In terms of transfer fees and wages, the Tigers have spent big under Acun Ilicali – though he would say he would have spent bigger were it not for financial fair play restraints – to try to win promotion to the Premier League.

With four matches left, starting with Saturday's at Watford, they have some catching up to do, six points behind Norwich City and seven behind faltering West Bromwich Albion, both of whom have only three games remaining.

Miss out and the squad may have to be broken up to go again.

The realities of Championship life mean that six star performers are on loan so the group is probably coming to its end, but Rosenior would like as many back in pre-season as possible.

"I'd love to work with them longer than this season, whether that's Jaden (Philogene, a permanent signing with a buy-back clause), Greavesy (Jacob Greaves), Liam (Delap), Tyler (Morton), Fabio (Carvalho – the latter trio on loan)," said Rosdnior, who also has Noah Ohio, Anass Zaroury and Ryan Giles on loan.

"I love working with them, and that goes for every single one of those players in our squad.

"The players who haven't played – Greg Docherty came on for eight minutes, ran himself into the ground for eight minutes (against Queens Park Rangers last weekend), Cyrus (Christie) comes on heads one out of our box in the last game. These are outstanding players and outstanding people.

"One of my biggest motivations, I'll be really honest, was to be successful this year, so we could keep a group together for next year.

"I still believe that we have a really, really good chance if we play to our potential, that we can do something special this year.

"Other people can write us off, I don't really care, but one of my biggest motivations is to keep a group together for as long as possible because I don't think this group have even scratched the surface of what they can achieve.

"If I'd had this group in pre-season, we'd be in an even better place and that says a lot for their backing that Acun and Tan (Kesler, the vice-chairman) have given me as the head coach, a lot for the players and the way they've taken on board the information.

"You speak to other clubs in this league and we're respected now, teams fear us at home and away."

Lewie Coyle and Sean McLoughlin trained on Thuesday and are available but Rosenior says Zaroury is "touch and go".