No longer is a visit to the MKM Stadium all about the famous concourse street food
Barry is the Hull City correspondent, and previously covered Nottingham Forest for the Nottingham Post/Nottinghamshire Live. Barry has reported on Hull City’s League One title success and Championship campaigns
For those 20,000 or so Hull City fans who left the MKM Stadium in the relentless heavy rain on Saturday, there would have been a real sense of pride and joy at what had gone before.
Sergej Jakirovic’s Tigers swept aside Southampton with a clinical display, one of the teams with a huge budget and backed to seal an immediate return to the Championship, with a swagger and style rarely seen at the MKM Stadium in recent months.
Yes, the visitors may have seen most of the ball, but Jakirovic’s side controlled the game without it for long periods of the contest and scored some terrific goals, only denied their deserved clean sheet in the final seconds of added time.
The victory was symbolic, however. It was City’s second home win of the campaign, coming in just their third outing. Last season, it took 12 league games for them to win two in front of their own supporters, 13 if you include the Carabao Cup loss to Sheffield Wednesday’s second team.
Prior to the start of this season, City had won just 29 of their 92 games in front of their own supporters since promotion back to the Championship in 2021, and it had become a major worry.
Fans had become fed up with performances and results at home. The Tigers finished last term bottom of the home form table. Three wins in the final five were crucial in keeping them in the league, but just two before that win over Oxford United in mid-March told its own story.
Under Jakirovic, though, City appear to be writing a new chapter. One where fans arrive at the MKM Stadium excited, and not just for the food. The fear and trepidation have started to dissipate. In pre-season, they beat Sunderland, drew with Getafe, and then won a thriller against Oxford. Though, in truth, that should have been made far more comfortable than it was in the end with Oli McBurnie’s late winner.
The blot on the copybook was the 3-0 loss at home to Blackburn Rovers last month, but even that had a major caveat attached with a bout of illness sweeping through the camp in the days leading into the game. And in truth, City played like a team who had spent the week in bed.
Yes, Southampton have not had a great start to the season, but still had a team packed with quality assembled at a signifcant cost and City’s performance, the three points, was perhaps a coming of age moment. In a similar fashion to the delightful win at St Mary’s under Liam Rosenior the season before last.
Watching City has a very different feel just at the moment, and while it’s too early to get too carried away, perhaps those lingering MKM Stadium ghosts have been put to bed.
Only time will tell, and the next two against Championship stalwarts Preston North End, followed by Chris Wilder’s Sheffield United, will provide further indication of how well Jakirovic’s side feel about playing in front of their own supporters.
For now, however, the feelings are changing, and the MKM Stadium is seemingly no longer the away fans’ stadium of choice. Long may that continue.
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