Pedro Martins, incoming Hull City manager, sees realism amongst the romance in win over Wigan Athletic

The Tigers' charismatic owner is nothing if not a brilliant salesman.

A grey East Yorkshire day when the rain lashed down might not have been the easiest sell to Pedro Martins, the Portuguese manager who spent the last four years in Greece with Olympiacos but had come over for serious contract negotiations.

After no-doubt being love-bombed by Ilicali's talk of his "beautiful" football club and its "beautiful" city, a double rainbow hung over the MKM Stadium as the pair posed for photographs in the stands.

Do not ask me how Ilicali managed to arrange that, he seems to have friends in very high places.

If Martins had witnessed a resounding victory, he could have been lulled into a false sense of security. Had Hull played as they did in Friday night's defeat to Luton Town – their fifth in a row – he might have been checking the flights home on his phone before half-time.

As it was, he got to see a fairly balanced picture of what he is due to inherit. There are things to work with, as well as to work on, and there was character on show that had gone AWOL for a while in front of a supportive if not massive crowd.

The details are still to be thrashed out, but this was not a game to scare Martins off.

The Tigers showed the levels of commitment caretaker-manager Andy Dawson asked for on Friday night. He should not have had to, and almost certainly asked for them before the game too, but it had gone missing during the downturn in form which sealed coach Shota Arveladze's demise, so it was good to see it back.

They also cut out a lot of the kamikaze over-playing out from the back which made the 2-0 defeat such an uncomfortable watch, even if the goal they conceded – inevitably to Will Keane – was poorly defended.

A move 39 minutes in summed up the two sides to Hull, James McClean picking up a lazy ball with the outside of the boot from Dimitrios Pelkas only for Cyrus Christie to pounce, then Lewie Coyle to thud in with a tackle. Ben Amos was forced to tip over Alfie Jones' header from the resulting corner.

The talent is there, it just needs to be applied better. Driving that will be one of Martins' biggest tasks.

Christie and Dogukan Sinik were rewarded for the impacts they made from the bench against the Hatters, and both more than justified it. Greg Docherty, surprisingly, was not, but it allowed Ozan Tufan to be pushed back from the No 10 slot into a holding midfield position and whether that was the reason or not, it seemed to focus the mind of a player who has too often been a luxury player lately.

The presence of Christie one further forward than his natural right-back position allowed Coyle the security to get forward and produce a number of dangerous balls, including the one Pelkas, only ever previously on the losing side for Hull, to drag his side back into the contest.

Until then, it had been looking like it might be the same old story.

There were 14 minutes on the clock when Theo Aasgaard whipped a cross over and Keane ran onto it to do what he always struggled to in his Hull days and score.

That required a show of character perhaps not seen since the team dug in for a draw at Burnley.

Much as full debutant Sinik on the left was the more eye-catching winger, it was from the right where most of Hull's dangers came and when Coyle crossed from deep, Pelkas arrived at the far post to head his team's first goal in 385 minutes.

Wigan came out strongly for the second half, allowing Nathan Baxter to show Martins what he could do with a brilliant low reaction save from Keane, and that allowed Hull to show a bit of mettle.

Docherty was brought on in the hole – not a move to please entertainment-hungry Ilicali but a sensible one – and in stoppage time Tobias Figueiredo replaced centre-forward Oscar Estupinan as a third centre-back.

Dawson hands over a team three points better off than he inherited after Estupinan's thumping header from Callum Elder's 65th-minute corner. After seven goals in August, it was the Colombian's first since.

Christie might even added to it but steered a shot wide, leaving a real heart-in-mouth moment in stoppage time as Coyle scrambled a long throw bound for Charlie Wyke.

It just showed hard work usually gets its reward. If Martins is to make a success of life at the end of rainbows, he needs that message to become permanently engrained.

Hull City: Baxter; Coyle, Jones, Greaves, Elder; Slater; Christie, Pelkas (Docherty 63), Tufan, Sinik (Longman 63); Estupinan (Figueiredo 90). Unused substitutes: Ingram, Woods, Smith, Seri.Wigan Athletic: Amos; Nyambe, Whatmough, Tilt, McClean; Power, Naylor (Shinnie 76); Broadhead (Wyke 76), Keane, Aasgaard (Darikwa 76); Magennis (Fletcher 88). Unused substitutes: Kerr, Bennett, Tickle.Referee: A Woolmer (Northamptonshire).