Saturday, October 25, 2008

The Geovanni Magical Mystery Tour Continues



No, that's not a picture of Bigus. It's Joe the pub-goer, who is thrilled about the run of success that his club, Hull City, is having in their first trip to the Premiership. After gaining promotion from the Championship thanks to a 1-0 playoff win against Bristol City, many had predicted that Hull would be sent right back down. We at UF predicted a little better. For now, Hull are doing quite a bit better than anyone predicted.



Hull City have started off their first season of top-flight football with 20 points from their first 9 matches on a record of 6 wins, 2 draws, and only 1 loss. This puts them at the top of the table after today. Given that Chelsea and Liverpool play each other tomorrow, there are two possible results for Hull: (1) Chelsea and Liverpool tie, leaving Hull in 3rd place but only 1 point behind the leader; or (2) either Chelsea or Liverpool win, leaving Hull tied for second place with the loser of that match.

Aside from the wonderful job that Brown, the gaffer, has done, the early success of Hull City can be attributed largely to Geovanni. After scoring only 3 goals in 19 appearances for Manchester City last season, the Brazilian has already scored 4 goals in just 7 appearances this season. His diving header against West Brom today came from an excellent bit of skill by Marlon King, but was an exhibition of Geovanni's lethal finishing.

Can Hull City continue to pull off both the big shock wins (e.g. against Arsenal), the sturdy away wins (e.g. West Brom), and continue to handle business through the end of the season? Can Geovanni keep up this goal-scoring pace? I'm not sure if either is possible, but being already halfway to the magical 40-point "safe from relegation" total, I think that we will continue to have fun watching this club move through the EPL (suck it Barclay's!).

2 comments:

The Fan's Attic said...

the way spurs, newcastle and stoke are playing, i think hull is safe already.

Kopper said...

For about 25 minutes, the game was liek a hockey game-- end to end. Hull are fun to watch. I see them as finishing 7th or 8th, which woul dbe quite an accomplishment.