The past record of Hull City speaks for itself in terms of our lack of top-flight football until this season, but a further, more off-the-wall indication of our lack of size will be the number of ex-Tigers we come up against in the Premier League.
Any that we do face are more likely to be loanees who were sent by their big club to us upstarts in the Championship when the player was learning and we needed the extra bodies. And do you know how many Premier League ex-Tigers I can count, permanent or otherwise? Seven.
Doesn't sound a lot does it? For the permanent ex-Tiger, it means we've not sold on or produced many players capable of a much higher echelon of football; alternatively, it means we've kept most of the best ones for ourselves to plot our own rise through the ranks. I prefer the latter option. Anyway, in neither case did we sell upwards.
The two ex-Tigers in the Premier League who were our own players, not borrowed for a month or more, now play for Stoke City and Blackburn Rovers respectively. Leon Cort was a bonafide Hull City hero; Keith Andrews certainly not so, although he did receive some undue criticism. Even though both are Premier League players now (though Andrews has only just taken his seat) I wouldn't have either of them back. We're far beyond the stage of having the good-but-not-that-good Andrews in our midfield, irrespective of what Paul Ince says, while for all our gratitude to Cort, an amazingly dominant presence in our defence during Peter Taylor's last two years, Michael Turner has more than achieved his initial task of making his predecessor a piece of history. Glorious history, but history nonetheless. Cort left us for Crystal Palace, who were in the same division as us, while Andrews dropped two tiers to go to MK Dons. So it's not as if we were held to ransom by the players' attraction to bigger clubs or City's own desire for filthy lucre - although Cort did fetch £1.25million and represented excellent business.
As for the loanees, well there's Fraizer Campbell, obviously. He'll play against us for Tottenham next week after we've done our job on Arsenal this weekend (stop spluttering at the back there). We also had the pleasure of taking Neil Clement into our ranks last season. The West Bromwich Albion defender, was a little too left-sided on his debut (a right-footed mistake allowed Bristol City to take the lead) but settled in to cover Wayne Brown's injury lay-off in style before Tony Mowbray, realising we could usurp his own promotion aspirations with the aid of one of his own players, recalled him. Hard to blame him for that, and Brown had recovered in any event.
A third loanee was Mark Noble, the fiery West Ham United and England under 21 midfielder who played for us fleetingly in the 2006 season, Peter Taylor's last, and while clearly blessed with ability, didn't pull up any trees as a box-to-box midfielder. It's hard sometimes to understand how he became as good and as established at Upton Park as he did, but then one considers the upheaval, the benefit of added experience and the familiarity of being in his home territory to comprehend his lack of impact at Hull City compared to the higher standards he has shown with the Hammers. I think he's an excellent player.
Ricardo Vaz Te was the gawky, Portuguese striker on stilts who was snapped up from Brown's old club Bolton Wanderers, where he remains today, for a loan spell during the 2007 scrap. He clearly didn't feel like scrapping though - a few smart touches aside, he was a waste of a sub's shirt most of the time, finally having his spell shortened after his only start - a vile 3-1 Easter defeat by Wolves - where he was embarrassed by the endeavour and effort of his strike partner Nicky Forster and clearly did not want to know.
That leaves Danny Mills, then.
I am loath to discuss him at length, as a) his stint with us, and conduct since, deserves its own thread on here and will eventually get one (not for good reasons, I should clarify); and b) although he is still being paid by Manchester City, he hasn't had a sniff of the first team there for some considerable time - indeed, it was Stuart Pearce who initially tried to get rid of him, and Pearce's tenure at Eastlands seems a long time ago now. It's hard to accept that Mills is a Premier League player now on anything other than a technicality, and when Manchester City visit us next month he'll be nowhere near the action.
Any that we do face are more likely to be loanees who were sent by their big club to us upstarts in the Championship when the player was learning and we needed the extra bodies. And do you know how many Premier League ex-Tigers I can count, permanent or otherwise? Seven.
Doesn't sound a lot does it? For the permanent ex-Tiger, it means we've not sold on or produced many players capable of a much higher echelon of football; alternatively, it means we've kept most of the best ones for ourselves to plot our own rise through the ranks. I prefer the latter option. Anyway, in neither case did we sell upwards.
The two ex-Tigers in the Premier League who were our own players, not borrowed for a month or more, now play for Stoke City and Blackburn Rovers respectively. Leon Cort was a bonafide Hull City hero; Keith Andrews certainly not so, although he did receive some undue criticism. Even though both are Premier League players now (though Andrews has only just taken his seat) I wouldn't have either of them back. We're far beyond the stage of having the good-but-not-that-good Andrews in our midfield, irrespective of what Paul Ince says, while for all our gratitude to Cort, an amazingly dominant presence in our defence during Peter Taylor's last two years, Michael Turner has more than achieved his initial task of making his predecessor a piece of history. Glorious history, but history nonetheless. Cort left us for Crystal Palace, who were in the same division as us, while Andrews dropped two tiers to go to MK Dons. So it's not as if we were held to ransom by the players' attraction to bigger clubs or City's own desire for filthy lucre - although Cort did fetch £1.25million and represented excellent business.
As for the loanees, well there's Fraizer Campbell, obviously. He'll play against us for Tottenham next week after we've done our job on Arsenal this weekend (stop spluttering at the back there). We also had the pleasure of taking Neil Clement into our ranks last season. The West Bromwich Albion defender, was a little too left-sided on his debut (a right-footed mistake allowed Bristol City to take the lead) but settled in to cover Wayne Brown's injury lay-off in style before Tony Mowbray, realising we could usurp his own promotion aspirations with the aid of one of his own players, recalled him. Hard to blame him for that, and Brown had recovered in any event.
A third loanee was Mark Noble, the fiery West Ham United and England under 21 midfielder who played for us fleetingly in the 2006 season, Peter Taylor's last, and while clearly blessed with ability, didn't pull up any trees as a box-to-box midfielder. It's hard sometimes to understand how he became as good and as established at Upton Park as he did, but then one considers the upheaval, the benefit of added experience and the familiarity of being in his home territory to comprehend his lack of impact at Hull City compared to the higher standards he has shown with the Hammers. I think he's an excellent player.
Ricardo Vaz Te was the gawky, Portuguese striker on stilts who was snapped up from Brown's old club Bolton Wanderers, where he remains today, for a loan spell during the 2007 scrap. He clearly didn't feel like scrapping though - a few smart touches aside, he was a waste of a sub's shirt most of the time, finally having his spell shortened after his only start - a vile 3-1 Easter defeat by Wolves - where he was embarrassed by the endeavour and effort of his strike partner Nicky Forster and clearly did not want to know.
That leaves Danny Mills, then.
I am loath to discuss him at length, as a) his stint with us, and conduct since, deserves its own thread on here and will eventually get one (not for good reasons, I should clarify); and b) although he is still being paid by Manchester City, he hasn't had a sniff of the first team there for some considerable time - indeed, it was Stuart Pearce who initially tried to get rid of him, and Pearce's tenure at Eastlands seems a long time ago now. It's hard to accept that Mills is a Premier League player now on anything other than a technicality, and when Manchester City visit us next month he'll be nowhere near the action.
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