These are worrying times for Hull City, both on and off the field, with their poor Premier League start, which is piling the pressure on increasingly unpopular manager Phil Brown, and on-going uncertainties about the club’s financial position.   The team dropped into the bottom three of the Premier League after their 1-0 home defeat to fellow-strugglers Birmingham City on Saturday.   The result forced goalkeeper Boaz Myhill to admit fans were right to jeer the team off after the game and Brown to admit his side were feeling the pressure of their poor run of form.   Brown was characteristically frank in his assessment of the situation, telling the Hull Daily Mail that “I’m not after patience from anybody, I’m after results, that’s the business that we’re in”, a statement not guaranteed to have relieved the pressure on anybody.   Hull have only one win from six Premier League starts and Myhill said: “I refuse to criticise our fans for booing us off the pitch.

“They have followed us all over the place in all kinds of divisions. We have to do better for them; it’s as simple as that.”

Hull were unable to “do better” in their Carling Cup - tie at home to a virtually full-strength Everton side, whose 4-0 win was settled by three goals in the opening 24 minutes. Brown made nine changes to the side beaten by Birmingham.

And this policy, and the manner of the defeat it produced, has increased calls among Tigers fans for his removal, less than twelve months after he and his team were the fairy-tale story of the Premier League.

Hull have largely had to do without club record signing Jimmy Bullard, who hasn’t played since February, when he had a cruciate ligament operation.

 

A provisional comeback date for the £5m midfield playmaker had been set for the Tigers’ clash with Wigan on October 3rd.   However, Brown urged caution. He said: “To me he looks ready, but you’ve got to make sure he’s right. It’s more to do with the effects of coming back too early. He has to be 100%”   The international break follows the Wigan game and Bullard’s return is more likely to be on October 19th, when Hull travel to London to visit his previous team Fulham.   In the meantime, the club’s continuing failure to file accounts for the 2007/08 season, as reported in this column last month, has attracted national newspaper attention.

However, Tigers’ chairman Paul Duffen sought to reassure supporters, telling the Guardian last week: “There are no problems here, the club is properly financed.

“We are in discussions with our auditors about the wording of the notes to the accounts. Auditors have become much more stringent about signing off accounts since the global economic crisis hit.”

Duffen was unable to say when the figures would be published beyond “as soon as practicable.”