Boxing Day 2008, at Eastlands, the day that destiny was written in the stars for Hull City. It was to prove pivotal, it was the day that caused Hull to be finally relegated on 24th April 2010.
This was the day, that according to the excuse making George Boateng led to Hull City getting relegated 16 months later. What a wise man he is after the event.
If I hadn’t known better I would have sworn that Boateng is a professional footballer who should be big enough to take responsibility for his own poor performances, and admit that he wasn’t up to the job.
But no, Boateng is a product of the modern day whinging, moaning, spoilt professional footballer that takes no responsibiltiy for his own actions, instead pointing the finger at someone else in a vain attempt to blame others for his own shortcomings.
To suggest that the half-time team talk on the pitch at Manchester City resulted in their relegation is nothing short of embarrassing, I’m sure it didn’t help, but no way could it have led to Hull’s relegation 16 months later.
Boateng said it killed everyones confidence, well the morale of the team didn’t look too bad when Jimmy Bullard re-enacted the incident earlier this season after scoring a penalty to earn a draw there. In fact team spirit looked great at the time.
Ok, so only 7 league wins from the 55 games since that infamous team talk suggests something went wrong afterwards, the stats don’t lie. But what the stats don’ tell you is how much Hull had overachieved before that incident, they could never maintain the sort of results they were getting prior to that.
One statement sums up Boateng for me, he said “People will say ‘why did you not say anything?’ but he was our manager.” And there for me is the real reason Hull went down, beacause the team had no backbone.
Paddy Power