Ash

How we have missed Ian Ashbee. How we have missed the club's greatest skipper, and certainly one of football's great skippers.

Had he been fit, and Michael Turner been kept - or even one of the above - then this blog is in no doubt that Hull City would have had a better season.

Ashbee has been out for almost exactly one year with the bad knee injury suffered at Aston Villa towards the end of last season. His absence has been noted not just as captain - the succession of players who have worn the armband without much talent for captaincy made it even more obvious, however - but as a cajoler, encourager, enforcer and the skilled moderator between players and club hierarchy he has always been.

We are not only lucky to have a smart, skilled youngster like Tom Cairney in our ranks. We're also lucky that when he leads our midfield next season, he'll have the best possible guide alongside him.

Anyway, Iain Dowie has claimed that "at a push", Ashbee could play for half an hour against Liverpool in the last game of the season a week on Sunday. Despite later saying it may still be too early as Ashbee is under orders to rest, this became a no-brainer as soon as Dowie chose to say it was doable.

The one time when there is room for sentiment in football is when neither you nor your opponents have anything to play for. By the time Liverpool visit the KC to bring down the curtain on our two years in the limelight, they will almost certainly know exactly where their European destiny lies irrespective of the result. Ashbee's semi-fitness should give him a place on the bench and with it, a chance to wear the Premier League crest on his sleeve one last time.