Tiger by the Tail

Looking at both sides of Hull City’s new form under Marco Silva

Editor’s Note: A big shout to @Peter_Hunt77 for taking a red marker to my initial article and correcting errors. For most, my mind was saying one thing and my fingers typed another. This is why I need to write after more than a single cup of coffee.

There’s a very difficult internal struggle I’m having determining the fate of this Hull City squad. At the apex of their self-destruction, they were averaging over -1.6 xG per game, easily conceding threatening opportunities on a consistent basis and looking like their investors were hellbent on sending this team back to the League Championship. I was feeling bad for the club’s fans, who have been battling the chairman regarding the name of the team, as it was rumored to be changing from Hull City Association Football Club to “Hull Tigers”. Oof.

However, things have turned around. In a surprising twist, considering Will wrote how switching horses mid-stream tends not to work, Hull appear to be a team on the rise. They currently sit in 18th place in the Premier League table, but based on their current run of form, such as their 2–0 win against Liverpool and a 0–0 draw at Old Trafford, it doesn’t appear they will be in the drop zone for long.

I’ve been done wrong before by my optimism, and I refuse to allow myself to get caught up in the wave of emotion that is seeing an underdog begin a surge up the table to safety, especially when so many (including ourselves) picked them as one of the three teams to get relegated. Therefore, I have brought in a collaborator to help sort out my feelings about Hull and be the rational counterpoint to my buoyancy.

Me: Hello, there. Thank you so much for joining me to help figure out precisely who this Hull City team is, and whether or not I’m being too high on them rescuing their season.

Also Me: Happy to be here, since it’s evident you’re going to get overly mushy and sentimental about the work Marco Silva has done in just four league matches in charge.

Me: Well, he has gone 2–1–1 in league matches, and they beat Manchester United 2–1 in the Football League Cup (though they previously lost 2–0, but… semantics). Their only league loss was 2–0 against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.

Also Me: And so the love fest begins. He’s totally your new Garry Monk, isn’t he?

Me: A bit early in the debate to take those kind of shots, isn’t it?

Alright, alright. Let’s get back to the facts here. We should start with what this team was before Marco Silva arrived. Under Mike Phelan, they went 3–4–13, scoring a league-worst 17 goals (tied with Middlesbrough) while conceding the second-worst goals against at 44—only Swansea had allowed more. Their team make up began as a 4–1–4–1, with Meyler, Huddlestone, and Clucas staying central while relying on Andrew Robertson and Ahmed Elmohamady being the players to give them width, linking up Diomande and Snodgrass in front.

That lasted six matches, as they got blown out 12–7 in those games. Phelan eventually switched to a 4–2–3–1 to help protect Hull’s mediocre back line, but that turned out even worse, as they were outscored 10–1 in those three matches.

Eventually, he landed on a back three, introducing Harry Maguire and moving Sam Clucas wide. The initial idea was fine, as the wing backs connected with the central midfielders regularly, but they couldn’t connect to the strikers and continued to have a lackluster attack, and the center backs still struggled to keep up with their opponent’s forwards. Mike Phelan would alternate through six different formation types before getting sacked, and the lack of continuity showed in their results and form.

Also Me: Wow. You really built your case for how wonderful they are.

(In case you didn’t catch it, I was laying on the sarcasm thick.)

Me: Yeah, I caught it. Thanks.

Also Me: So, since you’ve basically done the work for me, when am I supposed to chime in with the counter point to your “optimism”?

Me: Look, I have to show just how bad they were before I can showcase how much they’ve improved under Marco Silva. Have you never seen Law & Order: Special Victims Unit?

Also Me: That only makes me think of John Delaney’s bit about Ice-T.

Me: Ugh. ANYWAY, enter: Marco Silva. The two main formations he’s used has been a 3–5–2 and a 4–2–3–1 (he began with a 4–1–4–1 against Manchester United, but eventually moved to a 3–5–2). He has moved players around to stabilize the center back positions and has leaned heavily on Andrew Robertson as a left back. Harry Maguire initially played on the right, but once they received Omar Elabdellaoui on loan from Olympiacos, Maguire went back to center back. Their wing defending has improved tremendously, and—

Also Me: That pass map against Liverpool doesn’t look particularly inspiring. The links don’t look consistent and solid, and they barely found Abel Hernandez. Plus, they only had 28.7% possession in that match. And didn’t they concede twenty-two shots while only taking seven?

Me: Hernandez still took three shots in the match, and one of those nearly went in.

Also Me: This isn’t horseshoes. You don’t get a point for being close.

Besides, they still allow 18.1 shots per match, with a 9.24 shots per goal conceded rate, and a 0.113 expected goals allowed per shot (xGApSH), which is below average. Plus, their offense has a league-worst 0.086 xGpSH. And I don’t know if you watched that Manchester United match, but while their wing defending did a good job frustrating Marcus Rashford and Henrikh Mkhitaryan, their central defenders conceded a lot of prime opportunities. If anything, Hull were lucky they played against a team like Manchester United who struggle so badly with finishing. And that Bournemouth match… was against Bournemouth. At home. With Robert Snodgrass still on the team.

Me: Ah, I’m glad you brought up expected goals. Before Marco Silva arrived, Mike Phelan’s Hull side had an 0.834 xG per 90—second-worst and only behind Middlesbrough—while their defense had a terrible 2.465 xGA/90. Since Marco Silva took over, their xG per 90 is 1.08, and their defense has seen an even greater improvement, going down all the way to 1.54 xGA/90—almost an entire goal less per match! Along with that, Jakupovic has a 77.5 Save%, which is much improved compared to their previous keeper, David Marshall, and his 58.1 SV%.

Also Me: That xG/90 is the same as West Bromwich Albion’s. That’s not exactly encouraging, being compared to Pulis Ball. And a 1.54 xGA/90 is seventh-worst in the league.

Me: That isn’t one of the bottom three spots, last I checked.

Also Me: Anyway, they also lost two of their key performers: leading goalscorer Robert Snodgrass took his seven goals to West Ham, and Jake Livermore went to West Brom. While it’s nice that Hull earned €23.5 million off those two departures, it’s definitely going to hurt this squad going forward.

Me: But they turned that money into a solid haul: right winger Kamil Grosicki from Stade Rennais (€9 million) and attacking midfielder Evandro from FC Porto (€2.5 million). Not only that, but they received Andrea Ranocchia from Inter Milan, Omar Elabdellaoui from Olympiacos, Alfred N’Diaye from Villarreal, Oumar Niasse from Everton, and Lazar Markovic from Liverpool on loan. That’s a huge haul, and just about all of those players made an immediate impact on the squad.

Also Me: You make Abel Hernandez sound like a world beater, and that he will be enough to launch Hull over the relegation line. But he’s only scored three goals this season—two of those were in the Bournemouth match. Where are they going to get their goals?

Me: One of the major differences has been the effectiveness of counter attacking football. Hull have played a more direct style and have brought in players who can take better care of the ball in N’Diaye and Niasse, who like to dribble and can play box-to-box, helping to control play through the middle while defending it much better than previous iterations. It hasn’t been perfect so far, and their next match is against Arsenal at the Emirates (so take from that match what you will), but then comes Burnley, Leicester, and Swansea City. The connectivity has begun to emerge, and we should begin to see attacks that aren’t so erratic and frantic.

Also Me: I get that they aren’t going to be world beaters this season, and Marco Silva has done a great job picking this squad up off the floor of the table. And looking at the inconsistencies of the teams around them, I suppose they have a chance to escape relegation this season. That’s going to be a tall ask, and eventually the Marco Silva honeymoon phase will come to an end.

Me: They definitely need to improve on both aspects of the game, and that’s not usually something you want to be doing with fourteen matches left in the season. However, I think the players Marco Silva has brought in has improved the team, with a “whole is greater than the sum of its parts” result. It may end up being tiny overall, but if the trajectory of improvement can continue to climb at its current pace—and I know how difficult that can be—I don’t see why Hull City couldn’t avoid relegation.

Patrick Onofre is co-creator of The Challengers Podcast, a soccer website and podcast that discusses the Premier League, the Bundesliga, and La Liga. Listen to their show on iTunes, like them on Facebook, and follow them on twitter — @ChallengersPod.