Check out the Premier League odds for the upcoming season, and it’s clear that expectations for Hull City’s first season back in the top flight in a decade aren’t lofty. Some things never change.
Just ask Phil Brown, the manager who took them into the Premier League for the first time in the club’s history back in 2008-09 and somehow managed to keep them there.
“I think we were 20-1 on to go straight back down,” he tells The i Paper.
“Surviving in the Premier League, finishing 17th, that was a bigger achievement than getting promoted, absolutely no doubt about that.”
Hull’s unlikely act of escapology owed much, if not everything, to the Tigers starting the season like a train. Brown’s side won six of their first nine matches, a run which included victories against Arsenal at the Emirates, Tottenham and Newcastle, and were almost halfway towards safety before the clocks had gone back.
