Premier Point

It has been a difficult week.

I must clarify that statement for fear of seeming a bit insensitive to the tragedies and disasters that have befallen other parts of the world.

It has been a difficult week for fans of Hull City. There, I confirm that I am narrow minded, typically insular and ignorant to the pains, tribulations and soul searching that is going on elsewhere but in my own universe there is nothing quite as important as the battle of my football team to survive for another season .

It has been a week since I compiled my Spreadsheet of Doom, the usual analysis and guessing of the final few games for Hull City and the ten other teams hovering above the relegation places of the English Premier League.

In the short course of just one week and only one more game per team there has been a bit of movement in the dynamics of my Spreadsheet.

An unexpected couple of good results has lifted two of the previously "at risk" teams clear of the drop zone and they can relax for what is left of the season. The nervousness of the remainder has been heightened by matches between teams in the bottom 9 places, the elusive six pointers as they are called.

Yesterday, my team Hull City played away at fellow strugglers Fulham ,quietly confident of getting a result against a team that they thumped 6-0 in the corresponding home fixture. In the three seasons of top flight football Hull City have won five against Fulham perhaps the best record involving any Premier League Team. The home team have had a good string of results to lift their position slightly and do have a good squad of players, many overseas Internationals and solid domestics.

The First Half of the game was high tempo and end to end but with no score. I was a bit concerned as my team have the worst record of performance in the second half in the whole of the League and sure enough they were 2-0 down within three minutes and before the hour was up. Fulham were relentless in their pressure, speed of attack and fluidity of passing and Hull City were finding it hard to live with that.

The Craven Cottage ground is a bit old school on the banks of the Thames and with the spacious steel and corrugated sheet shed-like structures that typified most traditional venues up until the late 20th Century when the trend of scrapping and rebuilding or relocating completely became the norm. The crowd are about a metre from the touchline, close enough for players to catch the odour of a Tikka Pukka Pie or a Werthers Original or the spittle from an over enthusiastic fan venting euphoria or indignation.

The Hull City players are used to the spacious modern stadium experience and to some who have not come up through the lower leagues the proximity of humanity could be a bit off-putting.

Fulham's fans conveyed to their team that they had probably done enough for all three points and the festival atmosphere was contagious. The commentating team from BBC Radio Humberside were optimistic as ever and retained confidence in what has been a fantastically close knit team ethic under Steve Bruce's managership but with every passing minute there was a scaling down of their expectations. With the likely outcome being a defeat the regular presenter and the ex-Tiger summariser lost a bit of concentration. The Fulham substitute who had thumped home the first goal, an Iranian International, had his name mispronounced with the phonetic equivalent of "The Shagger" causing much initial mirth and then cautious back-tracking most likely after a bit of comment through the headphones from the BBC Producer.. Up to that point that event was the highlight of the game for me.

A loopy deflection, freakish in trajectory came off the cross bar and one of City's newest strikers was quickest to react and the roof of the net bulged. 2-1. In the following minutes Hull showed determination and Fulham began to wilt. The woodwork of the home team goal was battered and rattled. The other of the newest strikers who had been busy but in vain all day finally got his reward and City, previously down and out had salvaged a point. 2-2.

This result and those of the drop zone contenders have been fed into my Spreadsheet of Doom.

I cannot come to any firm conclusions yet and later today there is a pivotally important match between Sunderland and Cardiff City who occupy the bottom two automatic relegation places.

However, the standings are critically poised and in my analytical guesstimation my team just need the one more point to be safe. Definitely, maybe.