Mark Hughes may only have a handful of matches to prove that he’s the man to lead Manchester City forward, starting with Sunday’s televised clash at the KC Stadium. While Hull have had an excellent start to life in the Premier League, these are the sort of matches that the Citizens need to be winning if the Welshman still wants to be in a job come the end of the year.
The visitors are 8/5 (Stan James) for their second away win of the season and there’ll be two schools of thought on this. On the one hand, you could argue that City are having a miserable run, winning just one of their last seven matches. These have included 2-0 defeats at Middlesbrough and Bolton, so the 19/10 (Paddy Power) about Hull is surely the value bet. However, some would instead say that Hughes’ team have been carving out the chances to win games, but have lacked the necessary cutting edge.
The Tigers are having a mini-blip of their own at the moment, although two of their last three opponents have been Manchester United and Chelsea. Nevertheless, they seem to save their best performances away from home, with just two wins recorded in front of their own fans. Therefore, it could be worth backing City to take advantage, but perhaps not until after the interval. Victor Chandler offer 9/2 that the away team win the match after drawing at half-time, and you can be certain that they’ll have a more defensive set-up than in recent matches.
The Eastlands outfit might be struggling, but Robinho is currently scoring for fun, having managed five goals in as many matches. He’s 6/1 (bet365) to open the scoring in this match and 15/8 (bet365) to score at any time. Hull have a headline-making Brazilian of their own in Geovanni, and the midfielder will be popular at 9/1 (Blue Square) to heap further misery on his former club. For a tasty outsider, look no further than Michael Turner; the Hull centre-half is 28/1 (Blue Square) to be the first name on the scoresheet for the third time this season.