Chester pleased Hull defence got ‘back to basics’

Hull City's James Chester (Picture by Tony Johnson).

However, after being forced to sit out four Premier League games that saw Hull City concede 10 goals, the 25-year-old defender’s patience finally ran out last week.

“I am not the type that would go knocking on the manager’s door,” said Chester, whose return in Saturday’s 2-0 victory over Crystal Palace came as Steve Bruce reverted to a three-man defence for the first time in five weeks.

“Not straight away anyway. I knew my opportunity would come sooner rather than later so I held my tongue for a while.

“But, yes, I might have knocked on his (Bruce’s) door last Monday. I wasn’t going to knock on his door straight away. I am not daft. I knew my chance would come. But, hopefully, I have now taken my chance and can stay in the side.”

Chester, whose dismissal at home to Stoke on August 24 had been his previous league outing before facing the Eagles, stepped in smoothly to Hull’s rearguard.

Playing on the right side of a back three alongside Curtis Davies and Michael Dawson, the Wales international rarely put a foot wrong as the Tigers claimed a first clean sheet since the opening day win at QPR when he had netted the game’s only goal.

Chester, who yesterday joined up with his international team-mates ahead of Wales’ Euro 2016 qualifiers with Bosnia-Herzegovina and Cyprus, added: “It was nice to be out there again.

“It seemed like a long time since I played in the Premier League. I thought I had started the season quite well but I got the suspension and since then I have not been back in.

“I felt we were a bit more like ourselves as a team. Since we brought the new lads in, we have been a lot more attacking and scoring a lot more goals.

“But we have also gone away from what kept us up last season so it was nice to get back to basics against Palace. I wouldn’t say we reined in the attacking senses but we had to be tighter defensively. We showed that.

“Getting clean sheets was what we were good at last year. We’d often win games 1-0 and 2-0 and that’s massive in this league. If we get that balance right, hopefully it will be a good season.”