Ahead of this afternoon’s return to Craven Cottage, I got the lowdown on our visitors from Hull City supporters’ website Tigerlink, including their thoughts on the new Fulham head coach Marco Silva, whose first spell in English football came when he took charge of this afternoon’s opponents.
What are your expectations of Hull this season?
Winning the League One title has given Hull City momentum, but a solid mid table finish would be more than acceptable with survival the clear priority.
Despite promotion, the Club’s ambitions are severely limited by our owners the Allams who run the Club almost on League One wage levels, won’t spend money and have alienated many diehards over recent years with bizarre anti-fan policies. Large numbers of Hull City supporters won’t attend games until the Allams sell up and leave. As a result our membership and attendances are very poor, we desperately need change at the top to unite the fanbase and fill our stadium again.
What have you made of Hull’s opening to the season?
A fine 4-1 away victory at Preston on the opening day was followed a week later by a down to earth 3-0 home defeat to QPR. We then lost narrowly 1-0 at home to struggling Derby County last Wednesday but failed to impress and so far we appear to be struggling with the step up in class.
What are your thoughts on Hull manager Grant McCann
Manager Grant McCann won over many Tigers’ fans by winning League One last season but he is still unproven at Championship level (he took us down from the Championship to League One the previous year and presided over one of the worst losing runs in our history) so it’s a very important year for him and some fans still need to be convinced he is up to management in the Championship
Who is Hull’s player to look out for?
Key players George Honeyman and Mallik Wilks are likely absentees on Saturday due to injury. We are missing them badly.
Tom Huddlestone played for us in our Premier League days, he has re-signed and debuted this week, he may feature at Fulham. But look out for midfielder Greg Docherty who has a touch of class and Keane Lewis-Potter a lively young attacker with a bright future.
What is your opinion on the Fulham team and ex Hull manager Marco Silva?
Marco Silva was Hull Manager in the early part of 2017 and narrowly failed to keep us in the Premier League. He had notable wins against Liverpool and Manchester United during that time.
His stock has plummeted since so he will be very keen to be successful again and it would be no surprise if the Cottagers bounced straight back to the Premier League at the first time of asking.
We reckon Fulham will make the play offs at the very least
How do you expect the game on Saturday to go?
Fulham have managed to hold on to many of their Premier League squad. They have started very well and have players of proven quality. In contrast Hull City have an exciting young team but this is the first taste of the Championship for many of our squad and and we look low on experience and quality.
We expect a gutsy performance and we are cautiously optimistic about our attacking threat, but we may struggle defensively
If our former players Harry Wilson and Tom Cairney are missing from Fulham’s line-up it may help our chances.
And finally, what’s your score prediction?
Fulham 3-1 Hull City
MY PREFFERED FULHAM STARTING XI (4-2-3-1): Gazzaniga, Tete, Ream (C), Tosin, Bryan; Seri, Onomah; Carvalho, Kebano, Cavaleiro; Mitrovic.
@FFCSeb’s Score Prediction– Fulham FC 1-0 Hull City (I’ve only got one right so far this season!)
Many thanks to Tigerlink for taking the time to answer our queries ahead of this weekend’s meeting at Craven Cottage. Do check out their informative Twitter feed for their take on Hull City’s fortunes and other events across East Yorkshire. We’d like to wish Hull City all the best for the remainder of the season.
