It feels like forever since Hull City last played a Premier League game - indeed, 18 days is forever. The FA Cup and the adverse weather have had their say, but now it's back to business. And, frankly, Phil Brown should really be picking a side to just go for it at Tottenham Hotspur this weekend.
There are absentees through injuries, incompetence, personal crises and international commitments, but crucially there are no absentees due to being packed off to the first club to wave a large cheque towards Adam Pearson since City last kicked a Premier League ball. Stephen Hunt plays at White Hart Lane, and remains the vital cog in City's stretched and understrength midfield. Kamil Zayatte's alleged potential for a January move looks like it was pure stirring from an agent whom, we hope, the player chooses to dump as quickly as possible.
Hunt and Zayatte are City's best performers and it's gratifying to see them still in the side. But also returning are Paul McShane and Dean Marney, for whom injury has robbed them of action that they would have undoubtedly got in the Christmas and New Year fixture madness.
Marney remains maligned and frustrating, but this is his old club he is visiting tomorrow, and if he gets a game he will make his point, just as he did with a tremendous display when part of the legendary 4-3-3 formation that gave Spurs a collective bloody nose with a 1-0 win last October.
It is pie in the sky whom Brown picks. The available personnel has changed substantially since the 2-2 draw at Bolton Wanderers, while the stiffs brought in for the bleak Cup exit at Wigan Athletic a fortnight ago will, with the hopeful exception of Tom Cairney, be back in their club suits.
The real business of survival begins in a fortnight when Wolverhampton Wanderers visit the KC Stadium and Jimmy Bullard simultaneously makes his anticipated return. Until then we can keep a cool head and be serene about any fate that awaits us, while maintaining a spot of partisan hope, of course. Spurs were mesmerising at the KC in August but have faltered a little, and Stoke City have set a benchmark that the Tigers can emulate by winning there already.
What matters is that the best players currently available remain so in the amber shirt, in time for Bullard's return and primed for the fixtures that will make or break a season which many outside East Yorkshire borders reckon will end in the drop. We know different. At Spurs we may just show the others why.
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