Officials Deny Tigers the Spoils Again, as Hull City draw with Newcastle United

Once again Hull City fell foul of a referee who was inconsistent and favoured the bigger club. Michael Turner’s second half header from a corner clearly crossed the line and the sense of relief was palpable as we celebrated…But, you guessed it, the goal was chalked off.

In the fallout from Tuesday’s performance by Steve Bennett—where it has emerged that the Sky Sports director tipped off Howard Webb to Bennett’s error, which the fourth official illegally transmitted to the man in the middle—you would be forgiven for thinking that the officials have decided to stick together and stitch up the Tigers at every conceivable opportunity as we saw blatantly wrong decisions go against us, and cards brandished willy-nilly, but only to those in Black and Amber shirts.

We bossed this game but failed, once again to kill a game we dominated at the Circle.

Newcastle are dreadful, and it is sad to see such a great club, with a great tradition of playing the game in the right way, reduced to playing with no drive or direction, wasting the talents of Michael Owen like this is criminal.

Brown made seven changes, and in the process must have learnt some important lessons which I feel are as follows:

Boateng seems shot at this level now. He gave the ball away on a regular basis, and having done so seemed unhurried in getting back.

Conversely, Dean Marney had a storming game, and more composure would have seen him head a stoppage time winner to gap an all action performance.

Another positive was McShane’s transition to partner Turner in the centre of defence. His limitations distribution-wise become less of a problem and he read Owen well, only letting the England man have one clear-cut chance on goal. An interesting option which surely sees the end of Wayne Brown at Hull City.

Brown will have also learnt that Cousin can’t play as the lone striker, Stelios is woefully short of match fitness, Geovanni seems shorn of ebullience, looking disinterested at times, and that Nathan Doyle can play at this level, the right-back gained more and more confidence as the game wore on.

We hit the bar, the post and Shay Given was the main reason why we failed to win.

 A clean sheet is a good thing for confidence, and once we get the next win we will be on the march again and I fancy us in the North East as Toon are in a bad place at the moment.