Tigers exodus leaves fans wondering: Who is next?

With just 17 days until the new season gets under way, the Tigers appear neglected and unloved.

Andy Robertson’s much touted move to Liverpool is edging closer to completion, which coming on the back of Ahmed Elmohamady becoming the third player in as many days to be granted permission to leave the club’s training camp in Portugal, means any optimism generated by last month’s appointment of Leonid Slutsky last month has evaporated.

Even the acknowledgment that Elmohamady’s form dipped last season cannot lessen the sense that talk of an instant return to the Premier League is, right now, fanciful at best.

Like fellow weekend escapees, Tom Huddlestone and Eldin Jakupovic, the Egyptian international is still the type of player around whom a promotion bid can be built. Ditto Curtis Davies and Josh Tymon, two others to have departed since relegation along with the much in-demand Harry Maguire.

Robertson’s likely exit to Anfield later this week will only deepen those supporter concerns, while Kamil Grosicki, Sam Clucas and Abel Hernandez are all on the radar of rivals readily aware of how unsettled things have become at the KCOM.

Grosicki, in fact, gave voice to that latter point over the weekend when, in a Twitter exchange with team-mate David Meyler, he asked, ‘Who is next?’ The Polish international, a £7m arrival last January, had his answer within 24 hours as Elmohamady left the Algarve for talks with Aston Villa over a third spell playing under Steve Bruce.

For Hull, it represents a worrying state of affairs with the new season – and a daunting-looking opening assignment away to Elmohamady’s likely new employer – looming large.

The parallels with a year ago are striking, but there is one big difference this time around. Last summer, a proposed takeover of the club by a Hong Kong consortium was edging towards what seemed like being a successful conclusion.

Things were so positive, in fact, that the Allam family announced in the programme for the visit of Manchester United towards the end of August it was likely to be their last match at the helm.

Of course, the takeover subsequently crumbled amid problems satisfying the Premier League’s fit and proper person test, but what the saga did was leave the club seriously hamstrung during the window.

That is not the case this summer, the recent transfer logjam that last night was finally starting to ease via the free transfer capture of Fraizer Campbell understood to have been more to do with other clubs pipping Hull to the post with big offers or major targets opting to go elsewhere.

Campbell’s return to the East Riding nine years after helping the club clinch promotion to the Premier League is welcome. So, too, would bringing in Ryan Kent, hugely impressive on loan at Barnsley from Liverpool last term.

But, if Hull are to truly be competitive this term then Campbell has to be the first of almost a full team of signings before the window closes or, for the second year running, January will be spent rectifying the failures of summer.

That attempted rescue job by Marco Silva does, at least, offer hope that the current travails can be overcome. Improvements, as he underlined by wheeling and dealing with the £20m proceeds from selling Jake Livermore and Robert Snodgrass, can be quickly implemented in football.

Slutsky’s task is to bring about a similar transformation in the coming weeks – it being unthinkable that he would have taken on the job without the promise of backing from the club via the proceeds of any summer sales.

This, let us not forget, is someone who won three league titles in his native Russia and managed the national team at Euro 2016.

Actions, of course, speak louder than words and decisive action in the transfer market on the back of Campbell’s impending arrival is required as Hull’s squad, on the evidence of two friendlies in Portugal, sports more holes than a tramp’s vest right now.

Michael Dawson, for instance, is the club’s only recognised centre-back, while Robertson’s imminent departure on the back of Tymon joining Stoke means there is also no orthodox left-back. The paucity of Slutsky’s options is frightening.

The amiable Russian, on his solitary appearance before the media in this country since being appointed on June 9, stressed the need to bring in “five or six” new signings.

A fortnight on from that unveiling, this number has ballooned into double figures, according to those close to Hull’s head coach.

He and the club’s supporters badly need a lift that only an influx of several new faces can bring or even a preservation order will not be enough to maintain the Tigers’ hard-earned reputation as a genuine Football League force.