Hull City being written off is understandable but lack of respect has gone too far

The Tigers aim to spring a huge surprise when they return to the Premier League

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It should come as no surprise to anyone that Hull City are being written off before a ball has been kicked in the Premier League this season.

After all, 12 months ago, City were tipped to be relegated from the Championship, with the mere suggestion they could in fact win promotion to the Premier League nothing more than some crazy, Leicester City-style 5000/1 bet.

Now they’ve achieved it, every man and his dog are coming out to have a pop at City and back them to make an instant return to the Championship.

In fact, the final whistle had barely been blown by Jared Gillett at Wembley, and some were suggesting City would struggle to reach Derby County’s dismal 11 points back in 2007/08.

Of course, City are going to be bottom of just about everybody’s predictions going into the Premier League season, that’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that. And let’s be fair, a team that came up from the Championship through the play-offs are always going to be tipped to go back down.

That’s nothing new, but Sunderland proved last season that with the right recruitment and good management, you can succeed in what they make you think is this big, bad beast of a world in the Premier League. Competitive, yes. Tough, yes, difficult, obviously. Impossible? Absolutely not. If the Tigers do not stay up, it will not be for a lack of effort, courage or desire, but there’s absolutely no reason why they can’t make them all eat humble pie come the end of May.

What leaves a bitter taste in your mouth is seeing former players, who should know better, being disrespectful towards a club that worked hard and was promoted on merit.

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City might not be the world’s wealthiest, most fashionable club, but they’re a proper one. They’ve got people who work hard, a group of players who battled, fought and won promotion on the pitch, on merit, and supporters who love their club as much as anyone else.

“Hull are gone, man,” he began his rant on the Dressing Room podcast. “I’ll be stunned if they stayed up, they came in through the back door. TNT Sports have contacted me for the new season. They tried to slip in the Hull one for the first game of the season, I put my phone on ‘do not disturb.” It’s since been claimed that TNT Sports hadn’t actually booked him for the game on Saturday, or had any plans to do so.

Anyway, the Tigers didn’t come through Joe Cole’s churlish ‘back door’, they won promotion because they deserved to. Against the backdrop of everything they had to deal with, they overcame clubs with far bigger budgets, bigger fanbases and perhaps, ones that Cole might have preferred in the Premier League. Football, however, doesn’t work like that. Success is earned on the pitch, and Sergej Jakriovic’s men are fully deserving of their crack at the Premier League, and no amount of embarrassing, childish, crass – and I’m loath to use the word punditry – because it wasn’t – will diminish that.

Yes, they might have fallen out of the top six in the last two weeks of the season, but for the majority of the season, they were in the top six, and for long periods, were in the running for the top two. Had Joe Cole done his research, he would have known that, but perhaps Joe doesn’t look much beyond the top flight, which is a surprise given his beloved West Ham are below City in the football pyramid, and he had a spell playing in League One with Coventry City, now also in the Premier League.

Perhaps that would be too easy, wouldn’t it?

Maybe Joe wasn’t aware that City were only the fourth team in play-off history not to concede a goal in both the play-off semi-finals and final. Again, a bit of research wouldn’t have gone amiss, Joe.

And as for Carlton Cole, who seemingly doesn’t know two of Liverpool’s defenders have left the club when describing their great defence, he should know better, given his son, Cayden, was part of City’s academy until he was recently allowed to leave.

Being written off is fine, it’s part of the game, everybody has an opinion, and that’s all well and good, but when it comes to being downright disrespectful to a hard-working, historic football club, it needs to be called out. There are some very good ex-footballers making a living by working in the media, and they operate with class and dignity. It’s a shame not all can operate by those same moral levels.

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