A raft of City players will leave camp to join up with their national teams next week
Sergej Jakirovic and Dean Holden have a job on their hands over the international break(Image: Getty )
Hull City will look to use the upcoming international break to their advantage but Sergej Jakirovic will be working with a skeleton squad, it seems.
The Tigers made 18 summer signings and the extended international break, in which most European teams have four games to play, would ordinarily provide the perfect opportunity for them to settle in properly. However, City are expecting a raft of players to be called up by their national teams and that’s a process that is already underway, with Oli McBurnie returning to the Scotland fold and Sorba Thomas getting the Wales nod earlier this week.
Elliot Stroud, Konstantinos Tzolakis, Lucas Herrington and Christos Mouzakitis can expect to feature for their national teams, as well, while Semi Ajayi and potentially even Mo Belloumi could be set to leave the group in order to represent their countries, too, with Belloumi surely on the verge of his first Algeria cap.
As such, any squad-wide progress made at the club’s Millhouse Woods Lane training ground will be limited, but the Tigers will manage the period as best they can as they push to maintain the momentum the club has build over their first four Premier League matchdays.
And, City assistant Dean Holden actually sees the extended break as an advantage rather than having the opening half of the year disrupted by three international windows.
“It’s going to be an interesting one this year with the long break,” Holden said. “Some countries are playing four games in that period. I’m sure we’ll have a few that will be called up and fingers crossed they come through it unscathed.
“It’s the schedule, there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s the same for Championship and all Premier League clubs.
“We’re always going to be faced with that. It’s a little bit new but it goes back to the Qatar World Cup to a point where things took a bit of a break.
“I think it could be a positive because normally there’s two breaks pretty quickly, you play a few games and then have a two week break and then again. This is just condensed. “We’ll manage the time with the training group, making sure everyone is up to speed once we restart.”