After a good first season in the Championship last term, what's gone so terribly wrong this year?
Hard to put down to one thing. We seemed to make signings in the right areas in the summer, but centre back Michael Turner has taken a long time to settle in and replace Leon Cort, while we were without his partner Damien Delaney for a couple of months as well. We've not had a settled strike force either, mostly through injuries to numerous forwards.
Like ourselves you appointed someone within the club to take over
albeit somebody with more experience than ours. Has Phil Brown impressed?
He's made simple changes that seem glaringly obvious but needed somebody in his position, as caretaker manager with only one or two games to prove himself, to make.
For example, identifying a topheavy squad of strikers and lack of wingers to change from 4-4-2 to an effective 4-3-3. We await to see whether he's in his honeymoon period
and he'll soon return to being the manager that had a disastrous spell in charge of Derby last year, or if that experience has made him into a much better manager.
So, Phil Parkinson. One season wonder or promising manager?
He seemed the most 'qualified' man for the job and his signings seemed
good. An undeserved defeat on the opening day of the season followed
by the 'could have gone either way' defeat to your lot seemed to
affect him and change his gameplan for the worse. It's also been
suggested that his modern methods of training, dieticians and
Prozone-assessed tactics were not to the liking of the dressing room,
full of many players who until recently were lower league footballers
and still used to the more traditional methods of Peter Taylor.
Jonny Parkin started his career at Oakwell but as a defender, does he look like inflicting more misery on his hometown club?
He came back from the summer break overweight and unfit. He made it through the first few weeks of the season but got an injury in November. He's looked really out of sorts since then and has only managed to score once. Brown's realised that Parkin and Dean Windass don't work well together, so it's a toss up of which one will start
the match.
The Reds stormed back from 2-0 down to win 3-2 at the KC at the start of the season have the Tigers become more solid since?
I think it's hard to take much from that game. Neither team defended and it seemed to be an onslaught of balls from end to end - either team could have had 2 or 3 goals in the first half hour. The second half was just poor, and many have singled that out as the point that Phil Parkinson lost his nerve and tried, unsuccessfully, to play it safe from then on. We have been a lot more solid and hardworking since Brown took over, but do have the capability to let that lapse and throw away the odd game.
A lot of Barnsley fans see this game as win or bust for us, would you class it like that for Hull?
It would be awful to lose, simply because Barnsley would get 3 points, so a draw wouldn't be a bad result for us. There just seem to be a lot of very poor sides around us - Luton, QPR, Leeds - who may save us from the drop as long as we keep picking up points ourselves. Having
said that, we've lost to West Brom and drawn with Derby, then face Birmingham on Saturday, so this fixture is our best chance of picking up a win in February.
We tried to nab Dean Windass last season without success, who will be
Hulls dangermen on Tuesday along with the wily veteran?
Nicky Forster has looked our forward most like scoring recently. We look forward to seeing Ray Parlour making his first start. Nick Barmby is a key player but is out injured at the moment.
Who are you most worried about in the Barnsley ranks?
Don't know any of your players I'm afraid, sorry!
Where do you reckon both teams will finish this season?
Will wait 'til Tuesday's game to see how good Barnsley are because you seem capable of picking up good results but don't do it consistently. City will only go down if we send ourselves down, the teams around us just seem too poor.
And finally a score for Tuesday?
There'll be goals... maybe 3-2 again, but hopefully the other way round!
My Answers to Andy's Questions
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