When I heard the news Liam Rosenior was no longer Hull City’s manager, I surprised myself that my immediate reaction wasn’t that it was a bad decision, writes Andy Beill
‘Our season’s on the line tonight,’ I said at Elland Road as City attempted – and failed – to avoid a second defeat of the Easter weekend, thus dropping to 10th.
‘A must-win game’ at Watford nearly three weeks later, goalless, when Jacob Greaves found himself through on goal in injury time only to shoot straight at the goal-keeper. ‘That was the moment,’ I said.
Three days later, a trip to Coventry rearranged umpteen times due to our opponent’s Cup run, with each re-booking of those train tickets feeling more in vain than the last. Six points behind both Norwich and West Brom, who each still have two games left to play? Optimism isn’t a strong enough word for it. Ninety minutes later, Noah Ohio clinches victory in our game-in-hand. Three points behind with two games left to play? That’s not optimism, the form book says we’re going to sneak past West Brom — they can’t win a game!
Of course, they can, and they did, when it eventually came down to it on the last day of the season, and City failed to do their own bit at Plymouth anyway. Every must-win game, whichever way it went, the chance of the play-offs was still fully within the realms of possibility when you looked at the league table. And yet it feels like the season could still be going on now and we’d have never quite put together the string of wins and seen the other results go our way at the right time.
And so on May 7th when I heard the news Liam Rosenior was no longer our manager, while I was shocked that action had been taken, and I was sad that this was the end of his Hull City story that had included so many treasured moments, I surprised myself that my immediate reaction wasn’t that it was a bad decision.
‘I feel like I keep coming out here and saying the same things,’ or words to that effect, we would hear time and again in his interviews after dropping points: The more he said it, the less it seemed he deemed it within his powers to affect the outcome. Young players will make mistakes: That was his decision to have such an imbalance of inexperienced players without the older heads around them. Our home pitch isn’t in a condition to play a certain style of football on: That’s a known factor that isn’t going to change; the style of football we attempt to play on it 23 times a season is a choice, whether it fits with your ideals or not.
There was an over-commitment to certain players and ideas, without enough consideration to adapt. It led to a repeated cycle of doing the same things that was going to keep ending the same way: close, but ultimately not succeeding. I do hope Liam reflects upon that and learns from it; it should be a great regret that he didn’t do it sooner, when the margin of improvement needed was so small to achieve something together.
Did the owners ever truly believe in the manager? We had over a month of the position being vacant before the out-of-work Rosenior got the gig, during which time the apparent favourite Pedro Martins had been seen in the stands only for talks to break down. There were strong rumours that another change was coming just five months later, seemingly in reaction to only twice managing to score more than one goal in a home game. A new 21⁄2-year contract was signed in December 2023, only to be terminated less than five months later. They did appear to have Tim Walter strongly in mind as soon as it came to finding Rosenior’s replacement. But let’s not forget how quick they were to bring in Shota Arveladze when there was no pressing need to cut Grant McCann loose, only to realise he wasn’t the right man either.
As for our new gaffer TW, we await to see whether his talked-up cavalier style will give us the dangerous edge of Walter White or the weak defences of Walter the Softy.
A version of this article first appeared in the 2024 edition of Tigers Eye, exclusively available as part of HCSS membership