Although the victory at West Bromwich Albion is still fresh in my head, already attention has to switch to the visit of Chelsea to the KC on Wednesday night.
It's our first night game of the season in the Premier League - and there never are too many of those - and the situations of both clubs plus, from a Tigers point of view, a relatively prolific recent history between the two due to Cup ties, makes it all the more fascinating.
Even though the two sides start the game entirely level on points, there is no doubt, of course, that Chelsea will start as massive favourites. Ultimately, the Tigers' season has been about surprises and a sense of the unexpected, but even Phil Brown knows that you can't really plan for those. For example, he took a chance at Arsenal by playing an attacking formation instead of the standard 4-5-1, and bamboozled the Gunners so much by it that we won the game.
Chelsea will be different, very different. They represent genuine experience, of football and of winning, which Arsenal's gifted youngsters do not. They know more than most how to cope with enthusiastic newbies playing beyond their skin. They are also patient, not letting trifling matters such as a goalless first half concern them. Their pace, unshakeable pass-and-move ethos introduced by the marvellous Luiz Felipe Scolari, and their ruthlessness in front of goal (Arsenal's finishing was, lest we forget, very poor against us) will mean that luck - the one thing Brown has had that he hasn't planned for - will remain the Tigers' main source of hope for a share of the spoils at the KC.
There's also an additional worry attached to this game - the one that claims Chelsea will be badly stung by losing their four-year run of Premier League invincibility at Stamford Bridge to Liverpool at the weekend and use that hurt to give someone (ie, us) a severe trampling as a form of redemption. Again, the luck will need to be on City's side for that not to happen.
Luck comes in all forms and City have, of course, taken their share since Wigan eviscerated us back in August. In the four consecutive victories, all City's opponents hit the woodwork in their quest for a goal. Spurs did so twice, while Arsenal, West Ham and West Brom also managed to find the frame as they bore down on us. It's not as if the chances haven't been created. But you make your own luck, of course, and City's daredevil brand of defending - from Andy Dawson's photogenic challenge on Theo Walcott through the astonishing body-blocks of Kamil Zayatte and Michael Turner - has perhaps earned the Tigers the right, assuming some mythical beast hands out the rights, to an extra bucket of fortune.
The last time City hosted a League game against Chelsea was in 1988-89; indeed, it was October 25th 1988, making it within four days of a 20-year anniversary match. Again it was a midweek match, Hull Fair put paid to a quarter of the expected attendance, and although Chelsea, newly-relegated and still featuring stars like Kerry Dixon, were clear title favourites, Eddie Gray's City utterly crushed them with a 3-0 win. Keith Edwards got the first in front of Bunkers with a stirring shot on the turn, then added the third with a late penalty. The match was also significant for the only goal in a City shirt of Mike Smith, a mulleted youngster who emerged from the ranks but rarely showed his worth in a mere couple of years in the first team picture. It was a smart goal, however, as he ran on to an Alex Dyer pass and placed the ball inside the keeper's near post early in the second half.
Dixon missed an open goal with a four-yard volley and, as Bunkers gave him the expected verbal what-for, he responded with a huge grin. One hopes that something similar happens involving the South Stand at the KC and Nicolas Anelka (not that Anelka is prone to grinning, even when he scores) as the Cup ties involving the two clubs since - all of which City hosted - have gone substantially in Chelsea's favour.
In 1992, an industrial Chelsea side won 2-0 in the third round of the FA Cup, with goals from Vinny Jones and Dennis Wise, easily the two individuals you least wanted to score against you. Eight seasons on, the cosmopolitan Chelsea overturned a bottom-of-the-pile City 6-1 in the same competition, a game most notable for a glorious Gus Poyet goal, David Brown's beautifully chipped consolation and, hilariously, Chris Sutton going totally mental in front of Bunkers after he'd scored, due to a combination of his own inability to fit in at Chelsea and the Tiger Nation's merciless ribbing of him for such.
Then there was last season, when Chelsea turned up in the third round of the Carling Cup and sauntered back south with a 4-0 win, courtesy of a largely second-string side. City coped for most of the first half but once the first went in, the floodgates opened. Little more than a year later, and a very different Hull City, in quality, strength and League position, faces a largely similar Chelsea, albeit one playing brighter football than the extremely effective yet highly methodical stuff preferred by Mourinho and Grant.
Of course, we can on this occasion not find ourselves insulted or even bothered by the inevitable predictions of a Chelsea landslide, or at least a Chelsea win which will signal the start of our decline into the more bowel-like reaches of the Premier League, especially as we then face Manchester United on Saturday at Old Trafford. Yet Phil Brown, if his words are to be taken at face value, seems to have written off the Chelsea match, as he talked about 20 points from nine games becoming, after Chelsea, 20 points from ten. This was no slip of the tongue, but he did it subtly enough to make it not sound like he expected to lose. Clever man.
While no negativity is allowed around Hull City right now, nor is it warranted, we'd forgive the manager if he really was already looking at Manchester United, or even at the very-winnable home game with Bolton Wanderers a week later. Although he won't do so, he's earned the right to kick off his shoes this week. The rest of us can turn up at the KC on Wednesday evening, preferably a cold, sleety and blustery Wednesday evening, and just wonder if it is possible to stir up trouble among the status quo again...
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