The Tigers moved into the Championship’s top six with a gritty home victory
Enis Destan admits that he woke up on Saturday morning feeling that he would score on his full Hull City debut, and that’s exactly how it played out..
Destan scored the equaliser just before the half-hour against Portsmouth after City had fallen behind to the first of two Terry Devlin strikes for the visitors, before goals from Kyle Joseph and Joe Gelhardt sealed a 3-2 win to move the Tigers up to fifth in the Championship going into the November international break.
Gelhardt’s 79th-minute finish was expertly crafted from Charlie Hughes’ sublime pass over the top of the stranded Pompey defence and sealed a fifth home win, matching their entire tally last season.
The 23-year-old Turkish striker, who arrived in the summer from Trabzonspor, had been restricted to 10 appearances off the bench before being handed a full debut by Sergej Jakirovic in the absence of Oli McBurnie, and took his chance when he swept in Lewie Coyle’s near-post cross to level the game.
Joseph made it 2-1 before the break, but Devlin capitalised on some haphazard defending to equalise in added time at the end of the first period, before close pal Gelhardt notched his seventh goal of the campaign so far.
“We are so happy,” a delighted Destan told Hull Live. “We are coming with a win into the international break, and we will enjoy this moment together.
“I’m so happy. I started my first match in the first 11, and it was good. Before the match, I felt it; strikers can feel it. I was feeling that I would score, and I scored; it’s amazing. In the first minutes, we had good chances, but after they scored to make it 1-0 and we made it 1-1, we didn’t give up, we deserved it.”
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