While rivals dreamt of FA Cup glory, City got down to business in a rearranged league fixture against a weak Bury side and came out comfortable 2-0 victors.  Good form restored?  Steve Weatherill reports on proceedings.

Christmas time approaches. Party-giving! My word, it’s a source of stress isn’t? You buy in the twiglets, but what if Uncle Fred demands fresh lobster-and-monkfish vol-au-vents? You’ve invested in a consignment of industrial-strength Hula Hoops, but Linda from two doors down wants to know where the quails eggs with Maldon sea salt are, “what sort of party do you call this anyway?” she screeches. And you’ve splashed out on a whole case of Lambrusco, several different flavours and colours, and your boss at work is asking for something “a bit …. ahh, less fizzy perhaps?”. Pressure! Stress! What you really want are nice quiet, compliant guests. “Twiglets! Oh, lovely! My favourite! …. Hula Hoops, o you shouldn’t’ve gone to all this trouble! …. Mm, fizzy wine, it’s gone right up my nose, super! …. Is that the time, heavens, must rush, thank you so much for everything, and I was just wondering, could you come round and babysit our blonde and sexually predatory teenage triplets tomorrow, we won’t be back until late?”.

Bury yesterday were perfect guests, lacking only the triplets. Early season, we might have treated them to lobster-and-monkfish vol-au-vents and other choice delicacies, but our culinary form has been strictly fast food and tasteless snacks for several weeks now. And yet Bury smiled shyly, suffered a miserable afternoon of humiliation and inferiority, and yet still seemed to enjoy their party over in Hull. Only 2-0! “Eee bah gum, I thought it might have been worse Albert”. “Eckythump Arthur, like I always say, draw at home , lose away, don’t score any goals, that’s proper football that is, we don’t want none of yer fancy dans in Bury”.

And, you know, I think they don’t have any fancy dans in Bury.

We lined up … sort of like this:

Musselwhite
Hinds    Joseph        Delaney    Dawson
Green      Ashbee    Keates
Price       Burgess     Elliott

4-3-3? Well, I suppose so: Burgess was very much the lone front man, with Price and Elliott aiming to alternate between offering support to Big Ben up front and adding width to our midfield. The inclusion of Keates in a midfield trio immediately eliminated one of our most obvious failings in recent weeks – that we have been out-numbered, out-tackled and generally lightweight in central midfield – but that advantage would have come at severe cost measured in lack of attacking clout had Elliott and Price played as anaemically as of late. But Elliott had his most effective game of the season by far, Price was better than at any time since the sunny weeks of late summer, City were dominant from start to finish and Bury were lucky to get nil.

We were markedly the superior side in the opening exchanges, though it took ten minutes for us to craft the first serious chance as we attacked the end housing a batch of Bury. Elliott flicked optimistically at an Ashbee cross; the ball wobbled wide. Immediately afterwards Price, in a good advanced position, wastefully mis-kicked an Elliott cross, but the signs were already promising. Our attacking fluency was visibly returning and Bury were woefully lacking ambition.

And just after the quarter-hour we scored a goal which, even at this early stage, looked to have condemned hapless Bury to a defeat. Burgess was donated possession just inside the visitors’ half and he slipped a beautifully weighted ball behind the defence into Elliott’s path. The Ulsterman was crudely hauled down and a free-kick duly awarded, but as Bury lethargically tried to organise their defence an alert Marc Joseph struck the free-kick early, surprised keeper Garner spilled the shot and Price sprinted in to drill the loose ball home from somewhere near the edge of the six-yard box.

Shortly after that Bury had a shot, which is a phrase that won’t get worn out in this report. It went wide, of course: these dour Lancastrians could have played until Boxing Day and still boasted an attacking clean sheet. Even so, on the few occasions Bury did venture into our half we were ludicrously quick to haul all eleven Tigers back behind the ball. The balance of play in the middle part of the half had levelled out a bit, but we still looked the more dangerous team on the ball, with Elliott the liveliest performer on the pitch by a wide margin. He was involved in a delicious move shortly after the half-hour mark, as Price dummied on the edge of the box, surged down the right to receive Green’s deft pass and looped a cute cross to the back post, where Elliott astutely nodded the ball back square across the face of the goal for the onrushing Keates to poke it in …. only to be thwarted by a desperate and courageous block by Garner. And then, five minutes later, Price set up Elliott for another shot, but a well-judged tackle averted the danger.

Bury ended the half as they had not started nor middled it, by engineering a moment of alarm for the Muss. A hopeful shot took a wicked deflection, but our keeper threw out an arm and tipped the effort over the crossbar. A Bury equaliser at that moment would have been absurd, but it didn’t happen and we led 1-0 at the break. With – surely – more to come.

2-0 arrived very quickly. A long ball was biffed down the right for Price to chase. He hit a raking cross to the back-post where Burgess had time to control the ball and choose his option. He slammed a shot square across the face of the goal but, I think, it would have careered away wide of the far post had a Bury bruiser not intervened and toe-ended the ball into the back of his own net. An o.g., to which Burgess will doubtless lay claim.

Delaney crosses, Burgess shoots first-time, the keeper saves with his legs. Burgess heads against the top of the bar from a Dawson cross amid appeals for a penalty for a hand-ball offence. Elliot, on the left-hand side of the box, smashes a gloriously vicious left-foot shot against the underside of the crossbar. Price crosses to Elliott, whose header is fubled and then grabbed by Garner, who had looked a solid netman at Gigg Lane in October but whose handling was suspect throughout yesterday. Dawson scoots down the left, crosses to Burgess who lays it off to Keates, who shoots too high. Keates sets Price free, but he stumbles over the ball with the defence exposed. Burgess chips but the ball sails too high.

We are in total control and, pleasingly, creating goal-scoring opportunities from all angles. This is a vast improvement on our recent listless drabness but Bury are astonishingly unadventurous. In the first-half they had relied on veteran Lee Duxbury operating in the sweeper role. Think Franz Beckenbauer, Gaetano Scirea, Franco Baresi, Marcel Desailly: commanding in the air, positionally astute, confident on the ball, able to bring play forward with a surging run or a thoughtful pass. Lee Duxbury is all these things, except commanding in the air, positionally astute, confident on the ball, able to bring play forward with a surging run or a thoughtful pass. There was rich entertainment in watching him pretend to marshal his defence as time and again the Tiger tide swept past the shattered Bury ramparts. “Mark him! … no not that one, the other one … no, him, HIM … it’s OK, I’ve got him … o, bugger …” Feeble though Duxbury was, it would be unfair to single him out: Bury’s entire line-up was cravenly supine and, frankly, a disgrace to a club that was the pride of the North side of Manchester a century ago. In the second half Duxbury was substituted, to no noticeably good effect, and Bury persisted with their “if we only lose by a couple, we’ll be happy” attitude. In these circumstances it was hard to make any judgement about the defensive abilities of the derided Joseph. He didn’t have much to do, though still failed to convince on the few occasions he was asked to supply thumping defensive headers. Joseph did manage to boot the ball hard into Hinds’ face on one occasion, which suggests that he has a cunning plan to retain his first-team spot by inflicting injury on his rivals.

Dawson is limping by now (though not, as far I could see, as a result of a sly late tackle by Joseph) and an obvious candidate for a breather, but in the dying minutes it is Green that is pulled off in favour of Holt and we revert to a more orthodox 4-4-2, with Elliott joining Burgess up front. There are three added minutes, and in the second of them Holt shoots over the bar after Burgess presents him with an opportunity.

And so it finishes 2-0 to us, our players are pleased, and Bury’s look strangely satisfied too, or is that merely relief that they can go back home along the M62 now. You can only beat what’s put in front of you and I’ll accept an easy three points when they’re on offer but I don’t expect to face opposition as tepid as Bury on either of the next two Saturdays.

HULL CITY (4-3-3): Musselwhite; Hinds, Joseph, Delaney, Dawson; Ashbee, Green, Keates; Elliott, Price, Burgess.  Subs: Holt (for Green, 87), Whittle, France, Melton, Harvey.

Goals: Price 17; Burgess 47

Booked: Ashbee

Sent Off: None

BURY: Garner, Unsworth, Swailes, Gulliver, Duxbury, Woodthorpe, Connell, Dunfield, O'Shaughnessy, Seddon, O'Neill.  Subs: Porter (for Seddon, 52), Kennedy (for Duxbury, 54), Preece, Clegg, Barrass.

Goals: None

Booked: Swailes, Unsworth

Sent Off: None

ATTENDANCE: 11,308