Hull City must find the balance between trusting and improving the squad which secured promotion to the Premier League.
That’s the view of Craig Fagan who twice took that step himself, first with Derby County in 2007 and then in his second spell with the Tigers the following season.
Fagan joined Derby from City in January 2007 and helped them go up through the play-offs, before returning 14 months later to repeat the feat against Bristol City at Wembley.
The former City star says Sergej Jakirovic’s men ‘deservedly’ went up this season and underlined the task they face as a newly-promoted side as the transfer window opens on Monday, June 15.
“They weren’t aesthetically pleasing,” Fagan told HullLive. “Even the manager came out and said they were a team happy to not have the football, play on the counter attack and still create chances – and they did that, there are plenty of ways to skin a cat and they went up deservedly. They were no-one’s favourites and they used that to their advantage.
“The Premier League’s hard, there’s no getting around it. They’ll have to bring players in, they’ll have to be very smart, they’ll have to bring some maybe more athletic players into the squad. There’s going to be some changes.
“I don’t think they’ll be able to keep the same team that played in the final, the same squad, should I say. They will find it tough again. The evidence which they’ve shown bringing new players in, I think they’re going to need that massively in the Premier League.
“And that’s what tends to happen. The first season, when I think about it when I was at Hull and about the other teams that also survived, the first season if you can keep the majority of the group that went up and then add one or two with a bit more experience, obviously a better standard of course, you can survive that Premier League the first year.
“This is why the managers at that end of it get the top money to try and get that blend right. Yes you need new people coming in, you need people to understand the Premier League.
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“I don’t think they’re going to have the chance to be able to go, ‘We’re signing a player now to see if he develops or he’ll be OK in a season’.
“Hull need to sign people that are ready to go that maybe have sampled the Premier League, played for teams that are mid-table or bottom half and try and prise them to the project of Hull and keeping them in the Premier League.
“It’s tough because you need the group that got you up, also you need to inject fresh blood into that as well.”
After two years of promoted teams coming straight back down the 2025/26 campaign offered more hope, with Sunderland and Leeds both negotiating the step up – albeit both spent £100m or more.
Fagan’s experience with the Tigers tells him it’s the following season that can be more difficult as clubs try to evolve their teams. Phil Brown’s side stayed up at the expense of Newcastle in 2009 – but finished 19th in 2010.
“It’s the second year where I think a lot of teams struggle in terms of they think ‘OK, we’re here and we’ve arrived now’. They sign a different calibre of player, maybe ones that don’t care so much,” he continued.
“Sometimes clubs go away from what they know, and I think that’s where we as Hull City struggled a little bit in the second year because we didn’t sign players that were willing to fight and give every tooth and nail for the badge, if that makes sense. It was a bit more elaborate players than what maybe we were used to, so the second year obviously we went down.”
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