Signs looking good for top-10 Tigers to beat Premier drop

HISTORY is on the side of Hull City in their quest to stay in the Premier League.

Steve Bruce’s Tigers have, with the possible exception of Champions League hopefuls Southampton, been the standout surprise package of this season’s top flight.

Priced as short as 6-4 on to be relegated by the bookmakers before a ball had been kicked, City have confounded their critics to claim 14 points from their opening 10 games.

Tenth place is their reward and with the season moving into its second quarter traditionally being a time to take stock, the Yorkshire Post has taken a look back through history to compare how Hull are shaping up.

The findings make encouraging reading for Tigers fans with only six of the 64 teams demoted from the top-flight since the advent of the Premier League in 1992 having been in the top half of the table after 10 games.

Blackpool are the most recent, with Ian Holloway’s side sitting ninth at the corresponding stage of the 2010-11 campaign before crashing down the table to finish second bottom.

Two years earlier, Middlesbrough suffered an identical slide but then we have to go back to 2000-01 for another relegated side to be found in the top half after 10 games.

“We are making a fist of this league,” said Bruce, who in 10 previous seasons as a Premier League manager has suffered just one relegation, in 2005-06 when at the helm of Birmingham City.

“It was a huge win for us (over Sunderland on Saturday). We have got to get as many points as we can against the teams that will be in and around us at the bottom because the most important thing is staying in this league.

“At the moment, we are sitting in the top 10, which I didn’t think would be possible.”

Hull’s encouraging start has been built on rock solid home form, with their five outings at the KC Stadium having yielded three victories and two draws.

Better still, City have conceded just once – Cardiff City’s Peter Whittingham netting for Cardiff City in September’s 1-1 draw – in the East Riding this term.

Such a performance is not only admirable but also potentially season-defining with all five of the Premier League teams that have visited Yorkshire this season being ones that Bruce’s men were always going to be jostling with in the fight to stay out of trouble.

That trend will continue in Hull’s next home game against Crystal Palace, the only team ranked at a shorter price by bookmakers to be relegated – at 8-15 – than Bruce’s men when the season got under way.

Another three points, therefore, would be most welcome for Tigers fans, who have first-hand experience of how badly a once promising campaign can tail off in the depths of winter.

In the club’s first season at this level in 2008-09, Phil Brown’s men took 20 points from the opening 10 games to sit fifth in the table.

Once the clocks changed, however, City’s season collapsed with just two more victories being claimed and relegation only avoided thanks to the failings of others, most notably Newcastle United.

Mind, as exciting as Hull’s start to life among the elite proved, Brown’s squad rarely boasted the balance or quality of the current crop.

Saturday’s victory over Sunderland means City have now been a permanent fixture in the top 10 since winning at Newcastle more than six weeks ago.

For Paul McShane, the only survivor from the Yorkshire club’s previous stint in the Premier League, this can be put down to Bruce’s influence.

He said: “The manager has brought some brilliant players in who are also great characters and have a very good attitude. Those players deserve to be doing well because they are doing the right things around the place.

“Most of all, they are performing out on the pitch and so the amount of points we have got doesn’t surprise me.

“I could see something like this happening when the manager signed these players but it is still great that we are picking up points. Things are going well at the moment.”

McShane’s addition of the words ‘at the moment’ is a reminder that fortunes can change quickly in the Premier League.

On Saturday, for instance, City needed a Steve Harper save to deny Adam Johnson at the death to claim all three points against a Black Cats side who had played the entire second half with nine men.

Even so, this morning’s table does make for encouraging reading for Tigers fans – especially when it is noted that more than half of the 64 teams relegated since 1992-93 had been in the bottom three after 10 games.