Another record falls as Nick Barmby scores after seven seconds to tee up a win, the comfortable 3-1 scoreline hiding moments of second half alarm as Walsall attacked prompted by player manager Merson.

“O yes! Superb! Well inside ten seconds! Never mind our fastest goal ever, that’s gotta be one of the fastest goals anyone’s ever scored! Kick-off, Greenie down the right, inside to Barmby, perfect connection, back of the net, 1-0. Did you see that?!”

Well, no, I didn’t see that.

Having been persuaded that a quick dose of Christmas shopping at the club shop would allow delivery of presents to Canada by surface mail on Monday, I was standing in the queue outside my turnstile when the expectant roar signalling kick-off rose into the mild Autumnal air, followed just 7 (seven) seconds later by the exultant scream that reports without fear of contradiction that City have scored. The small band of latecomers glared balefully at each other. “Typical bloody City”.

Well, yes, typical bloody City, perhaps – but our dear old ramshackle football club is beginning to find a few new grooves in this season of mellow fruitfulness, most prominent among them a readiness to rip teams apart in the first half and go in at the break 3-0 up. We did it against Milton Keynes, excepting only the technical detail of the scoreline not being 3-0, we did it for real against Luton and we did it again yesterday against reeling Walsall. True, yesterday’s evisceration wasn’t quite as clean, cold and merciless as the awesome display that flayed Luton. And the second-half plod which gave Walsall a comely initiative on which they couldn’t capitalise was a disappointment. But “Walsall at home” is as dull a fixture as you could imagine: you’d’ve settled in advance for the three points and negligible excitement, but yesterday another whopping crowd in excess of 15,000 were able to enjoy rather more than that.

Myhill
Joseph Cort Delaney Dawson
Green Ashbee Junior Elliott
Alssop Barmby

The yellow ball is making its seasonal debut, and off we go, and we lead 1-0. I am indebted for the account that appears in the opening paragraph of this report to those who sit near me, all of whom were without exception generously willing to share with me their impressions of our opening strike, several among them hurdling gangways and clambering over seats to say “Did you really miss that goal Steve? Let me tell you all about it!”. Isn’t it nice to have friends? (And they do talk like that, honestly some of them do call him “Greenie” – IMAGINEZ! – and though I’ve had to sprinkle a few adjectives and adverbs in that opening paragraph to meet normal t/chat quality control standards, I have to tell you it’s 1974 since Andy Medcalf and Ed Bacon stepped beyond the “noun, verb and grunt was good enough for me old dad and it’s good enough for me” paradigm, and then only by mistake).

[Readers’s voice – enough in-jokes, Steve – or enough bafflingly arcane in-jokes, if you insist – could you just attend to the football a moment?].

Yeah, OK. We crushed them.

Walsall were rubbish, and we convincingly made ‘em look it. They fielded Paul Merson, a wild child of prodigious footballing abilities but a most improbable lower Divison manager. His choice for the afternoon was to address the football only with the outside of his right boot. Perhaps he had boils on his instep, perhaps he was doing it for a bet. But it lent an odd shape to the proceedings since when Merson was in possession – and when Walsall had it, it was normally him – the pass would invariably curve away in an arc off to the right, and, if no one intercepted, the ball would keep on curving. No one had the wit to agree a truce and wait and see if one such Merson pass would describe a perfect circle and eventually swerve back to the man himself, but, had that happened, make no mistake, Merson would have cushioned the ball on the outside of his right boot and sent it off on a renewed clockwise orbit.

But Walsall’s shame came in the shape of a lanky left-back who was wearing gloves. Not just little mitts either. Big chunky gauntlets, black and doubtless lined with Arctic fox fur. Gah! It couldn’t’ve been milder for November, I’ve watched cricket at Scarborough in August in colder than this, there are parts of Upper Teesdale that never have it this warm from one decade-end to the next. And yet this ponce had gloves on. I name him. Zigor Aranalde. My programme allocates him a birthplace in the Basque Country, and he is a disgrace to that noble land of fish-based gastronomy, impenetrable language, rough mountains and rougher cider.

Aranalde was poor, but as target of that condemnation he was not alone in the visiting rearguard. We streamed forward, with the combinations between Green and Barmby especially pleasing on the eye, and Walsall’s grimly stationary defence couldn’t cope. They were as immobile as Laura Bush’s hair. And more goals were likely, perhaps even ones that I would see.

On 18 Joseph skipped down the right, past Gloveman, and sent in a deep cross, which Elliott’s head met with force: sturdy save by Murphy. One 35 Gloveman feebly donates possession to Ashbee, who moves the ball out to the left, eventually bringing Elliott into the play and his low shot into the penalty box melee receives a kind deflection off someone (one of ours? one of theirs?) and speeds into the far corner of the net beyond the helpless Murphy. A couple of minutes later we are treated to a rarity, the Hull City Training Ground Move That Works (three since 1905, I think), and a devilishly cunning free-kick diversion strategy allows Elliott to pop a cross onto Junior’s forehead, unmarked ten yards out: his looping header bobbles against the post and rebounds into the flabbergasted arms of the toiling Murphy. Junior is nothing if not a determined battler (stop sniggering at the back) and he promptly translates near-miss into scoresheet-inked as a delightful move involving most of our attacking players leaves Walsall gasping for breath and Junior able to stroke our third goal into the net.

In truth, there have been relatively few moments of goalmouth alarm at either end, and Walsall have enjoyed a fair slice of the possession. It’s still 3-0 to us at half-time. Are we flattered? No, not at all, even though this isn’t as winsome as the demolition of Luton. The way this team plays does not necessarily involve dominance of the possession. We don’t have a central midfielder who tries to command the play and make himself available to team-mates at every opportunity – no one tries to do for us what Merson did yesterday for Walsall. Ashbee scurries and harries, Junior’s forte is reading the play and holding his position. Neither strikes me as good enough to survive in the Division above this one, and neither is particularly consistent in this one. But they provide a foundation, albeit an occasionally disturbingly unstable one, for our flair players to harm the opposition. Elliott, Green, Barmby: quick, smart and genuinely exciting players. They don’t need to dominate possession, they can score as long as they simply get their fair share of attacking opportunities. Alssopp was improved yesterday as the leader of the line, and there’s Facey (Dancing Brave) to return too. We are a goalscoring side.

Second half. It’s milder still if anything. But Aranalde hasn’t abandoned his gloves. Not a bit of it. It’s worse. He’s now added a thick long-sleeved black jumper to his ensemble, worn under the red Walsall top. Pitiful. I’d ask what a stalwart wintergreen-warmed Walsall left-back of the past would think of such antics, if I could recall any stalwart wintergreen-warmed Walsall left-backs.

Walsall score. Lots of space in advanced midfield. Shot pinged past Myhill from 25 yards or so. No pressure on the scorer, Standing.

That wasn’t very good.

And, at 3-1, it gets a bit messy now, dicey even. A Merson corner is headed goalwards, but is cleared by another over-eager Walsall man. Cort blocks a move inside the box and survives a worryingly confident appeal for hand-ball. Tricky African forward Jorge Leitoa is kept quiet, but Merson is fit and full of running, and swerves a shot hit – naturally – with the outside of his right boot into the outside of side-netting with Myhill struggling to get across to cover.

If the first-half has shown how we can slice teams apart with out modest midfield and our brilliantly imaginative and skilful attack, the second half is showing how our modest midfield can be suffocated and outplayed by determined opposition who’ve also got to grips with how to muffle our brilliantly imaginative and skilful attack. We’ve wholly lost midfield, where Ashbee’s display has deteriorated into one of his irritating “blame everyone but yourself for regularly failing to win the ball and giving it away on the few occasions when you do” afternoons. He got a mouthful from Delaney after one particularly dismal surrender of possession – he deserved it, and more, but responded by bawling abuse back at our favourite rosy-cheeked Irishman. Add in his customary yellow card for witless dissent and Ash’s performance over the piece was at best mixed. The team now looks disconnected. The ball is rarely going anywhere near the front men, although, when it does, Alsop wastes a glorious chance just after the hour by screwing an easy one wide, and Green has faded from view.

Time for a change and – not a moment too soon – Keane replaces Alssop, and Elliott moves up front. It doesn’t change the pattern of play. Walsall dominate midfield and press us hard down their right, our left. So off comes Barmby, on comes Walters. No help there either. The game is dictated by Walsall, and all we are doing is responding doggedly to their efforts. There are three added minutes and, via a timewasting substitution (Green / Price), we reach the final whistle.

Before yesterday the last time I can remember hearing City score rather than seeing it was at Turf Moor in 1984, when a rather incident-packed trip down from the NorthEast had us arriving late to join a huge group of City fans trying into force an entry to Burnley’s now-demolished Long Side. Yesterday’s match was not as tumultuous as that evening of thwarted promotion and deep despair, but it delivered three useful points designed to get us up out of the self-same Division. Our second-half display was pretty insipid, but I suppose that when you go in 3 up at half-time, you’re entitled to relax. Plenty more positives than negatives yesterday, which remains the overall judgement of the Taylor reign.

HULL CITY (4-4-2): Myhill; Joseph, Cort, Delaney, Dawson; Green, Ashbee, Lewis, Elliott; Barmby, Allsopp.  Subs: Keane (for Allsopp, 65), Walters (for Barmby, 75), Price (for Green, 89), Brock, France.

Goals: Barmby 1; Elliott 34; Lewis 39

Booked: Ashbee

Sent Off: None

WALSALL: Murphy, Wright, Emblen, Bennett, Aranalde, Standing, Osborn, Wrack, Leitao, Merson, Fryatt.  Subs: Paston, Roper, Birch, Taylor, Broad.

Goals: Standing 49

Booked: Emblen

Sent Off: None

REFEREE: G Lewis

ATTENDANCE: 16,010