Hull City boss Liam Rosenior makes key request of his players ahead of Bradford City friendly
The Tigers make the journey to West Yorkshire on Saturday afternoon
Liam Rosenior takes his Hull City squad to Bradford City on Saturday in their latest pre-season friendly and has taken the somewhat unusual step of encouraging his side to make more mistakes.
City’s first four games of their pre-season campaign so far have seen his players stumble at points, particularly when trying to play out from the back, which is Rosenior’s plan of attack and one he’s keen to perfect.
The Tigers coach, however, believes that if his players can get the mistakes out of their system at this juncture in the year, then there’s every chance they won’t be quite so prevalent when the campaign gets underway in just two weeks’ time.
“More of the same,” Rosenior told Hull Live. “More mistakes. I want mistakes to happen now rather than in the season. We made so many errors in the first half (against Barnsley) in terms of our decision-making from playing out, we kicked the ball far too much for my liking and we should have shown more bravery, but those are things we’ll work on in the next three days so it’s better for Saturday.
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“All of these things I want, and I want the players to have these mistakes so they are learning tools but their application and desire, I have to say, they’ve been a credit to themselves, to me, and they’re giving me a lot of confidence for the season.”
The Tigers are so far unbeaten in their games up to now, having beaten Galatasaray, Grimsby and Barnsley, plus the 1-1 draw in Bursa against Hatayspor.
Their performance against Barnsley on Tuesday night was a step up from what we’ve seen before – even if lacked a cutting edge – and Rosenior expects another rise in levels at Valley Parade.
He said: “For the most part (I was happy against Barnsley). I wanted more incision, I wanted more and I’ll always want more and demand more from the players. There’s so many things.
“The pitch at Grimsby was tiny, the grass was dry and it affected our passing game but we’re going to come up against that in the season. The pitch here (at the MKM Stadium) is beautiful, it’s a bigger pitch, it’s slick and we played some really good football up to the final third – there’s so many things that come into it.
“I just want to see an improvement game on game. So far, from a really tough trip to Turkiye against two very tough teams, I think that started our pre-season really well, the players are improving physically, tactically and mentally.”
