Hutch’s Hull City verdict: Olivia says hello, and keep clear of the Balti pies

    Rob Hutchison: far away at the time. Still travelling

Hutch is back. If not in person then via a very welcome proxy.

Olivia, Rob Hutchison‘s daughter, texted Colin post-game with a message and his one-word verdicts on our performances today.

First, the message:

One wordies are back! A long way to go to give up 2 points, and have the worst Balti pie I’ve ever had at a football match.

And now, the verdicts:

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Sixer’s Sevens: Hull City invoke the curse of the former player

Jake: ‘it won’t always be pretty’

At the end Hull City had three of our former players on the pitch, so it had to happen. Nevertheless, we stopped the rot and James Vaughan broke his duck. So there was some sunshine against the KC band.

Pete Sixsmith’s immediate post-match text, in exactly seven words, however, suggests that it was merely a ray, and that the clouds have not yet cleared:

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Hull City Who are You? : (2) Arsenal ‘cheating’, toxic Tiger times, ‘new fans’

Happy man: Gary Clark at the playoff final at Wembley, April 2014

For the second part of Gary Clark‘s* epic replies to Salut! Sunderland‘s questions – in fact not always replies but speeches, so don’t be surprised if the response does not always seem to correspond to the question – we take a long look at the wretched relations between ownership and club. We whinge about Ellis Short; for Hull City supporters, the problems may be deeper. But Gary also has time – lots of it – to exorcise a grudge against Arsenal and Mike Riley …

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Hull City Who are You?: (1) ‘fans queued to take Elmo to Aston Villa’

Gary with his wife Karen at Wembley

Colin Randall writes: I’d quite forgotten that when the estimable Hull City-supporting author Gary Clark* does Who are You? interviews, his clear intention is to out-Tolstoy Tolstoy for length. It’s great craic and much appreciated. But the sheer torrent of words forces me, not for the first time (Gary has been this way before), to split the resulting article into a more manageable two parts. In the first, Gary gives his lowdown on relegation, the season’s prospects, Seb and Elmo and the city of Hull’s once-hidden charms …

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The First Time Ever I Saw Your Ground: Hull City

Malcolm Dawson writes……..here in the latest instalment of his series in which, prior to an away game, he recalls the first visit he made to the home(s) of our upcoming opponents, strong Pete Sixsmith looks back on previous outings to the UK City of Culture that is Kingston upon Hull.

TFTEISYG HULL CITY.

One of the big disappointments of Hull City’s first promotion to the Premier League was that they were no longer the answer to the question “Which is the biggest city in England never to have had a team in the top division?” although they are the answer to the question “Which is the only club in the 92 where you cannot colour in any of the letters!?”

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Hull City vs SAFC Guess the Score: who can bounce back?

Jake: ‘you may have seen this one before – M Salut just deleted the date’

So we are on a run of four successive defeats. The alarm bells are not so much ringing as cracking into many pieces due to the sheer volume of their sound.

And Hull? Hammered at Derby, beaten in midweek at Fulham, their own dip in form undoing the relatively good work of earlier in what is still early in the season. When I set the Who are You? questions to Hull City fan and author Gary Clark – stand by for answers stretching to War and Peace length – the Tigers were just behind the top six. Now they’re 16th, just four places above us.

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Three early games to shape Sunderland’s season

After the worst campaign in recent memory for Sunderland fans, the rebuilding job has begun at the Stadium of Light this season as they dip into the Championship for the first time in just over a decade.

Simon Grayson picked up his first win of the season with a 3-1 win at Norwich after an opening weekend draw with promotion tipped Gary Rowett and his Derby County side, but have yet to win since. The last time the Black Cats dropped to the second tier it was an instant return to the top flight, winning the Championship with a stunning 17 game unbeaten run after the turn of the year.

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Seb Larsson goes to Hull with our best wishes – and thanks

Thanks for everthing, Seb – but please don’t suddenly rediscover your set piece genius against us

APOLOGIES FOR THE EARLIER LOSS OF THE SITE FROM THE WEB: IT SEEMS LIKELY ONE OF THE IMAGES — USED OF SEB WAS TO BLAME. ITS REMOVAL HAS DONE THE TRICK

There are departures and departures. Sometimes players go and we’re delighted to see the back of them, either because they proved to be useless for Sunderland or seemed to care nothing for the club. Offer your own list of candidates.

A few are so good or promising that it would be unrealistic to expect them as professionals to stay. Witness the two Jordans, Henderson and Pickford: they’ll always be Sunderland fans but how many of us would allow such simple preferences to stand in the way of massive job opportunities?

And then there are those who have done a job for us but for whom a move is in the best interests of club and player.

Seb Larsson falls into that category.

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Reading at last? Norwich perhaps, or Derby, Leeds, ‘Boro and Sheffield? What’s your fancy?

John McCormick:
John McCormick. Here we go again – but this time it’s different

I was away last week and didn’t log on much, on account of having a temperamental handheld device (a tip – don’t drop your computer onto a tiled surface) and iffy connections courtesy of a not-so-local bar.

But log on I did, twice.

The first time, it was to find three quarters of our readers thought our chances of immediate promotion were scuppered.

On my second log-in Colin’s poll had closed and the number had dropped to 70%. That’s still quite a damning figure.

Me, I’m not so pessimistic.

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