Football League World
·18 November 2024
Football League World
·18 November 2024
We asked our Hull City fan pundit what he thought of Tim Walter's style of football.
This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more…
Hull City have made an underwhelming start to the 2024-25 Championship season, leading many fans to question head coach Tim Walter just a few months after his arrival.
The Tigers parted company with former boss Liam Rosenior after the conclusion of 2023-24 after failing to guide City into the play-off spots, despite the significant investment of owner Acun Ilicali during the January transfer window.
The Turkish owner appointed Walter as Rosenior's replacement during the summer, after the 49-year-old had left Hamburg a few months earlier due to his failure to take the club back into the Bundesliga.
Unfortunately, Walter has also been unable to make Hull a promotion contender so far this season, with just three wins from his first 15 league games in charge, all of which came consecutively during an improved run of form earlier in the campaign.
The Tigers are now on a seven-game winless run in the Championship that dates back to early October, and find themselves 19th in the table ahead of an important week, which includes two potentially difficult away games against Luton Town and Middlesbrough after the international break.
When FLW asked our Hull City fan pundit, Ryan Frankish, if he was happy with Walter's style of football, he explained that he had not been impressed, and the Tigers are not difficult enough to beat at the moment.
"No, I don't like our football at the minute," Ryan told FLW.
"I think it's quite flawed. I think it's unnecessary to be so suicidal at the back with passing when you're going to push the centre-back into a wing position anyway, which seems to happen a lot with Hughes or McLoughlin.
"Whoever is that left centre-back, they always end up supporting the striker, and I don't understand the point of doing that if you're going to just pass it around the back all game until someone might nab it.
"I also think we aren't rigid enough, and you need to be rigid in the Championship to be able to get any sort of results.
"We saw our form improve under Rosenior when he got us sured up at the back, and yeah we were drawing games, but we were very hard to beat, and I think that is what we need as a core foundation to do well."
Despite the fact that they are only outside the relegation zone on goal difference, and amid criticism from frustrated supporters, Ilicali has reiterated that he believes Walter can turn Hull's season around.
He admitted that he is "not happy" with how things have gone so far, but stressed that the unavailability of certain players, such as Liam Millar and Mohamed Belloumi, had played a big part in Walter's failure to lift the Tigers up the table.
Ilicali insisted that he is still looking at the promotion picture rather than the relegation battle, and is looking forward to another opportunity to strengthen the squad in January, although Hull fans will grow increasingly impatient if they do not see Walter implement a brand of football that entertains them and, more importantly, gets results.
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