Defeat to Rotherham United exposes Hull City’s bad habits, admits Shaun Maloney

The Tigers’ defeat at Rotherham United means they have now dropped seven points from a possible 15 against the bottom five clubs in the second tier.

Charlton Athletic beat City in August at The Valley, while Bristol City claimed a 1-1 draw at Ashton Gate last month to leave only MK Dons and rock bottom Bolton Wanderers among the strugglers to have lost to Steve Bruce’s men this term.

“It is a wake-up call for us,” said the Scotland international, “it has to be. Rotherham were the better side and it has to wake us up for the rest of the season.

“The manager said before the game that we were going for the league championship and it was games like this that we had to go and win. It was the performance that we put in that was most disappointing.

“You can always win games or lose games when you are playing well but I don’t think we deserved to win this over the 90 minutes. Let’s hope it’s a wake-up call.”

City’s form since the Championship emerged from the last international break has been a concern, the six games having yielded just seven points.

Maloney added: “There have been patches in the last few games when we haven’t played as well as we can. We really need to get back to where we were last month.”

Burnley, Hull’s bogey side in recent years due to the Lancashire club having won nine of the last ten meetings, travel to the KC Stadium on Boxing Day.

“There are so many games in this league that you can put things right,” said Maloney. “We have to come back from this result and get back to winning ways. We’ve got a really difficult game and we will have to be far better than we were at Rotherham.”