Hull survived last season due to the incompetence of others despite their own best efforts at relegation. The final insult was their losing 0-1 to Manchester United who all but ran out the youth team WHEN THEY NEEDED A WIN TO ENSURE THEIR PREMIER LEAGUE SURVIVAL! It was unbelievable stuff. Unbelievably dire. The only player, in my opinion, who showed anything that day was Andy Dawson. At least he was trying... and taking kicks. And yes, he was in my fantasy team and did earn me near twenty points, if I remember correctly.
This season Hull City are again being tipped to 'challenge' for one of the relegation places, but again they may survive due to the incompetence and mismanagement elsewhere in the league. They are starting to make a little noise in the transfer market with the signings of Olofinjana, Hunt and Altidore and those are three good moves from our viewpoint. The question is whether or not it will be enough to re-invigorate a team that just completely shut down after Christmas last season. For fantasy purposes it is probably best to just stay away from Hull unless you are backing their opposition. For instance, their opening day trip to Chelsea could get ugly.
Possible Starting XI: Myhill, Kilbane, Turner, Zayatte, Dawson, Olofinjana, Boateng, Fagan, Hunt, Geovanni, Cousin
Players to Watch:
Stephen Hunt - I see the Premier League as a set of four groups...The Big Four, the Aspirants (Villa, Citeh, Everton, and Spurs), the Middle (Fulham, Rovers, Sunderland, West Ham, Wigan, and Bolton), and the Strugglers (the 3 promoted clubs plus Pompey, Hull, and Stoke). You could argue that maybe Fulham should be included with the Aspirants based on last year and Stoke the Middle but based on what I expect for this year, that's how I'm looking at it. Hunt gives Hull reason to think they might be able to climb above their fellow Strugglers into the relatively safe "Middle" zone. Hunt is likely to produce about 6 points/match and if he comes in to the fantasy game after a couple years out of the Prem costing about 6 then he's probably a pretty good deal (sort of like Eth at Stoke). My only caveat here is that Reading's strong attack may have boosted his numbers in a way that Hull aren't prepared to do. If you need to take a chance and he comes in cheap, then go for it. If they're playing ManYoo or you're looking for guaranteed production, then probably best to avoid Hull players altogether.
Geovanni - One of the stars of the early season last year faded as the campaign wore on and in retrospect was that most frustrating of fantasy players - one who occasionally had excellent performances but who you couldn't count on week-to-week to a) be in the line-up and b) grind out the phantom points when the goals weren't flowing. This sort of player is best suited for being a one week gamble if the price is right but isn't likely to string multiple strong performances together and hence not really useful fodder for the Barn Door. I'm not sure there's any reason to expect that this season will be any different than last for Hull or Geovanni - he isn't a young guy with upside and Hull haven't added enough pieces to indicate that they are likely to take a step forward and start producing big attacking numbers.
Boaz Myhill - As a "sort of" American (he is or at least was eligible to play for the US Internationally) I've followed Myhill a bit more than the average mediocre keeper on a team struggling to avoid relegation. He's not bad really but the defence in front of him doesn't do him too many favors and he's not exceceptional enough to make up for those deficiencies. Unlike Stoke, Hull haven't really established an identity as a grinding defensive team so it's hard to imagine that they'll pile up the clean sheets against lower-half teams. There will likely be plenty of saves available and Myhill is likely to be inexpensive. Still, he'd have to be pretty cheap for me to be excited about his prospects in anything other than a desperation situation where I needed the money for other things.
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