Hull City hoping for prolonged goodbye as change ready to come this summer
The Tigers head to Devon in with a shot of snatching a final day play-off spot
The realisation that this could be the last pre-match build-up of the season dawned on Liam Rosenior as he prepared his players on Thursday for their must-win final day trip to Plymouth Argyle. City’s regular season will come to an end at Home Park on Saturday afternoon and for Rosenior, it could mark the end of a chapter with a squad he’s grown to love throughout the course of the nine-month campaign.
Victory for the Tigers gives them a fighting chance of finishing in the top six, but Rosenior needs a favour from Preston at West Brom if their dreams are to become a reality, and North End’s display against Leicester on Monday night has hardly raised confidence levels.
If that doesn’t happen and the play-offs prove a step too far, City’s season will end and the flight back to Humberside Airport after the game will be one filled with disappointment and a fairly significant chunk of regret of what might have been. It will also signal the end of the class of 2023/24. Liam Delap, Fabio Carvalho, Noah Ohio, Tyler Morton and others will return to their parent clubs, and while City may want to do business, nothing at this stage is assured.
The summer break will signal another big turnover of players both leaving and coming in and Rosenior will have to start his process again with a new batch of recruits. Speculation will be rife around Jacob Greaves and Jaden Philogene, what will happen to other members of the squad, who will come in? So many questions and at this stage, no answers.
That’s why Rosenior is desperate to see his squad remain together for at least two more games, and possibly a third if they can get through a play-off semi-final and visit Wembley.
“Same as the other 45, you need a consistent process. You need to believe in and trust in the way that you work and then you hope that all of those things that add up, add up to a really positive performance first and a result afterwards,” Rosenior told Hull Live as he previewed the Plymouth trek.
“That’s the beauty of life, it’s not just football. You never know what’s around the corner. If you’d have said to me 18 months ago that I was going to end up being manager of this football club, I wouldn’t have believed you, and here I am.
