Hull City brought the curtain down on their stay in Slovenia with a 2-1 victory against Rizespor at the Ljudski Vrt Stadium in Maribor on Tuesday night.
Oli McBurnie’s belting header from Kieran Dowell’s cross gave City the lead early in the second half, before Abdus Omur set up Dowell to crash in the second within two minutes.
Despite a late rally from the Turkish Super Lig side, Sergej Jakirovic’s men held firm thanks to a couple of fine Jack Butland saves to make it two wins from two during their nine days in the country.
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Here, Tigers reporter Barry Cooper looks at the big talking points from a good night’s work….
City’s injury curse
Sergej Jakirovic often said last season that he was losing a player a game, and he wasn’t far wrong. Well, he’s lost four in one and another one in the second. Darko Gyabi, Matty Jacob, Mo Belloumi, Charlie Hughes, and Hidemasa Morita were all sitting in the stands, along with Mason Burstow, who is set to move to Sheffield Wednesday.
Skipper Lewie Coyle departed just before half-time with an ankle injury, which came after John Egan needed treatment having got his head in the way of a volley from a yard away, and Abu Kamara was fouled and needed a spell of treatment, and was then replaced at the interval.
City scraped through last season with injuries, and they can ill-afford the same again when their squad looks paper-thin already and anything but ready for the Premier League.
The prognosis on the likes of Belloumi, Coyle and Gyabi may be fine, but it goes to show how paper-thin the squad is, and emphasises the need for new arrivals, quickly.
The stark reality
City’s squad remains miles short of where it needs to be going into a Premier League season. With the players unavailable to Jakirovic, his group looks weaker again than the one that left the Wembley pitch on May 23.
Add to that Coyle limping off injured before half-time, and a host of players sat in the stands unavailable because of injury, it’s clear what needs to be done.
Plenty of work is going on in the background, but as we’ve said for a while, City need players in the door, and they need them to hit the ground running to give Jakirovic the best chance of getting them integrated before the opening game.
Jakirovic wanted two players in before this game, and that hasn’t happened. We expect Konstantinos Tzolakis to join the club while we’re out in Istanbul, while Leon Bailey is thought to be close after he wasn’t involved in Aston Villa’s friendly on Tuesday night.
Ellliot Stroud played what we expect to be his final game for Mjällby AIF, so that should now be completed, and it’s expected Florentino Luis will arrive over the weekend. Getting those in is a good start, but Jakirovic needs more, and he needs players that can make a difference, better than what he’s got, and crucially, ones that are fit and can impact the team now.
Sticking in there
If we’ve learnt one thing from watching this group of players over the past 12 months, it’s that they certainly don’t lack heart or fight.
Up until McBurnie and then Dowell scored early in the second half, City were largely second best and barely laid a glove on their Turkish opponents, but they stuck in there. Something that was their hallmark last season, and will need to be again this time around.
They rode their luck here, as they did last term, but they’ll need to tighten up in those key areas because you fancy Premier League attackers won’t be quite so generous in front of goal.
Butland catching the eye
The goalkeeper was the one player who played the whole 90 minutes, and during it, he really impressed. Well beaten for the Rizespor goal, he made two or three really good saves.
One late on with City leading 2-1 and under pressure was particularly good, as was one in the first half down low when the scores were tied.
City are spending a fair amount of money on Tzolakis, who everyone expects to be the number one, but Butland won’t give that shirt up without a fight, and he’s shown what a damn fine goalkeeper he is.
That’s Slovenia done
After just over a week on the banks of the glorious Drava River, City now head off to Istanbul, where they’ll spend the next four days on the Bosphorus.
During their stay in the Turkish city, the players will train at Kasimpasa’s training ground, they’ll enjoy a luxury boat trip courtesy of owner Acun Ilicali, and there will be a big press conference in the team’s plush hotel.
They’ll round off their training camp with a game against Kasimpasa on Saturday, before flying back to England on Sunday for a few days off, and then jetting off to Frankfurt to tackle Eintracht.
Hull Live will be the only English media with City during every step of their pre-season tour, and you can follow all our updates in print and online.
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