Shota sacking fails to halt City slide

Pictures by Hull City

Hull City 0 - 2 Luton Town

Sky Bet Championship

MKM Stadium

Attendance: 15,730

By Sam Hawcroft, Hull City correspondent

Just under eight hours after the oddly timed sacking of Shota Arveladze was announced, the Tigers kicked off against Luton with Andy Dawson as interim head coach.

But hopes of a caretaker-manager bounce began to diminish from just six minutes in as City proved that their troubles run deep, adding to their woeful goal difference and failing to register a shot on target all night.

The build up began with a frankly hilariously overblown light show given the sparser-than-usual crowd (many of whom, admittedly, might have been deterred by the appalling weather ahead of kick-off) and City’s lowly league position.

Perhaps they’d planned it for the big match against Stoke, which attracted an attendance of over 20,000 – but hastily had to jettison it in favour of silence and depressing music during the period of national mourning for the late Queen. Or maybe it was intended as a foretaste of the sights and sounds of Hull Fair, which gets under way a week tonight in the Walton Street car park.

There was then the briefest of silences as the players gathered around the centre circle before kick-off, which led some wags on social media to speculate that it was to lament the departure of Arveladze.

Dawson’s night got off to the worst possible start with an awful bit of luck that saw Alfie Jones bundle the ball into his own net in the sixth minute. Elijah Adebayo was first to a corner kick and, rising and turning, side-footed the ball on to the underside of the crossbar. It bounced at the feet of Jones, who was unable to move out of the way and prevent it from going over the line, and he punched the ground in anger as he got up from the floor. It was a real kick in the teeth that the Tigers never really recovered from.

A few minutes later, Dan Potts headed into the arms of Nathan Baxter from another corner.

City really weren’t getting much of a look in, but in the 15th minute, Ryan Longman hit a lovely curling effort from 20 yards that went a yard or so over the crossbar.

Four minutes later, the MKM Stadium finally sprang into life in response to a thunderous effort from Regan Slater that took a deflection and rattled the crossbar. Agonisingly for City, this one landed on the wrong side of the line.

Had that gone in, with City at 1-1, it could have been a different story. But there was little else to rouse the spirits in the first half on what was a cold, damp evening.

Frustration was clearly creeping in when Ryan Woods half-heartedly rugby-tackled Jordan Clark on the edge of the centre circle, and earned himself a booking. The Tigers managed to clear any danger from the resulting free kick.

In the 38th minute, Baxter did really well to leap across and tip away a shot from an unmarked Carlton Morris who had latched on to a long-range free kick on the left by Potts.

The Tigers were giving away far too many sloppy free kicks, leading to set-piece after set-piece from the Hatters. The Luton pressure was punctuated at one point by a very brief attempt to break by Óscar Estupiñán, but it was quickly snuffed out. The early goalscoring hero of the season was rarely in the game as attacking moves were few and far between.

As half-time approached, Baxter did his very best to keep out another Luton onslaught, and he made a brilliant stop to deny Clark – but he was powerless to stop a bit of individual brilliance from Henri Lansbury, who was in the right place at the right time as the ball came out to him, unmarked, and he belted in a low drive from 25 yards out. It really was no more than Luton deserved, and moments later the half-time whistle blew – and along with it came the increasingly familiar chorus of boos from the home fans.

Spurred on by that screamer of a goal just before half-time, the Hatters immediately went in search of a third after the restart, winning a corner in the 48th minute, and they continued to enjoy the greater share of possession as the Tigers just couldn’t find a way through. Hatters keeper Ethan Horvath’s gloves would remain unsullied by any City shots on target.

In a rare Tigers excursion into the Hatters area, Longman headed well wide of the far post from a cross by Lewie Coyle. It had followed shouts of handball in the South Stand after Amari’i Bell appeared to touch it as he tried to get up from the ground near the byline.

A few minutes later, after being fouled by Longman just outside the area on the right, James Bree put his free kick well over the bar. Minutes later, Morris was prone in the penalty area after tangling with substitute Greg Docherty (who had come on in the 59th minute along with Cyrus Christie), but despite the Luton number 9’s best protestations the referee waved away the spot kick.

In the 66th minute, Ozan Tufan missed from close range, before another – perhaps slightly more justified – penalty shout at the other end in the 69th minute, as Longman felt he had been pulled down in the area. Again, no dice.

Doğukan Sinik made his debut as 70 minutes appeared on the clock, along with the introduction of Jean Michaël Seri. The game felt keenly poised at this point – a goal for City would set up an exciting finish with time for them to claw something back; a goal for Luton would kill it off.

And the Tigers were starting to look a little more lively now, following the injection of those four substitutes, and Andy Dawson’s name rang around the North Stand. Shortly after, a snapshot from substitute Christie flew just over the bar. Then an attempt by Sinik was blocked by Bree, conceding the corner. Seri took the kick, from which Slater put a great ball in – but Jones just couldn’t properly connect with it, and it went wide.

In the 83rd minute, a pacy long-range punt from Luton substitute Gabriel Osho won a corner, much to his surprise, after Baxter couldn’t prevent it from going over the line. Osho held his hands up, signalling that he’d not meant for that to that to happen – but it came to nothing anyway, fortunately for the Tigers.

With just three minutes of normal time to go, Seri was about to take a free kick about 30 yards out when play was stopped due to a head injury to Clark. It intensified the build-up a little, but when the time came, the kick was easily cleared by the Luton pack in the box – and it would have been too little, too late for the Tigers anyway, that window of opportunity having long passed.

The honeymoon for Acun Ilicali is well and truly over, but surely he has a plan for a swift managerial appointment. Whoever comes in will have a bit of a task on his hands to gel this team of international starlets who might just be coming to the realisation that Championship football is not often very pretty, and requires a bit of hard graft.