Hull City preview

This Saturday sees league football return to the Liberty Stadium with Hull City visiting south Wales. It’s also the day you can can your hands on Swansea oh Swansea issue 37.
But first, here’s our preview.

Opponents

There’s been a lot of off field problems on Humberside this summer which you can read all about in our opposition view. In short though they’ve only got 13 fit players and some of those are featuring out of position with Jake Livermore dropping from central midfield into central defence. Taking all of this into account their win over champions Leicester was the surprise result of the opening day.

Form

Hull had a good pre-season results wise and followed it up with that excellent win over Leicester last Saturday. The Swans meanwhile kicked off the new campaign with a late 0-1 win at Burnley so both teams go into Saturday’s game with a 100% record.

Memorable moments

Fairly easy one to go here, we’ve heard it so many times and I make no apology for you hearing it again. The final day of the 2002/3 season saw Hull visit the Vetch with Swansea’s Football League status under threat. A James Thomas hat-trick saw the Swans run our 4-2 winners to survive the dreaded drop into non-league sending Exeter there instead. Phew!

Danger man

A player I’ve always liked is Robert Snodgrass. He did really well at Leeds before he transferred to Norwich in 2012 and then two years later he signed for Hull. He was injured soon after arriving and barely played as Hull were relegated that year. He played a key role in their promotion campaign though and must be kept quiet. His trademark is cutting onto his left foot from the right hand side.

Line Ups

As revealed by Francesco Guidolin at his weekly press conference, Leon Britton hasn’t trained for the last two days and with Gylfi Sigurdsson now pushing for a start it’s likely that the iceman will take Leon’s place. Elsewhere, Borja Baston has a minor knock so will not make his debut this weekend, while Neil Taylor and Ki Sung Yeung should return to the bench. Hull meanwhile are likely to be unchanged from last week due to having mainly academy players as substitutes.

Prediction

Hull will probably sit back and be happy to take a point with the onus likely to be on us. I’d expect us to win this one and although it may not be as straightforward as we’d like I’m going to say 2-1 Swansea.