“There are very few moments in a man’s existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he….supports Hull City” – Portsmouthian Charles Dickens, paraphrased from Pickwick Papers!

The signs point towards Hull City being a League One side on Saturday at 2:15pm. For one, City have only won once in twenty attempts on the final day of the season. That victory came over Rotherham back in 2016, and when you consider the goalscorers were Snodgrass, Diame, Livermore and Hernandez, you could be forgiven for thinking the current crop lack the same levels of ability to break the habit this year round. Not that a win is necessarily needed; if other results go our way, a draw could be enough. However, Portsmouth have a good home record with a 50% win ratio, and are actually on a run of 11 wins and 3 draws in their past 16 at Fratton Park. They have also won 2 out of their last 3 in the league including thumping Norwich 5-3 at Carrow Road. Last but by no means least, City have a terrible record against Pompey when playing crucial matches that could result in relegation. Back in 1991 at this level, Portsmouth beat City 2-0 in March to complete a league double over the Tigers and all but send City down. Dolan’s strugglers finished rock bottom despite Andy Payton’s 25 goals that season, a total that has not been bettered by a Tiger at this level since. In 2010, Ian Dowie’s first game in charge after Phil Brown’s sacking resulted in a 3-2 defeat which kept City second bottom. Despite twice leading through Caleb Folan, bottom-club Portsmouth scored in the 88th and 89th minute to snatch victory, Kanu scoring the winner.

Let’s try and find some positives. As I mentioned, it’s in our own hands and even a draw could see City stay up. Portsmouth are now safe and have nothing to play for so could well lack motivation and/or play a team full of youngsters. Whilst Pompey have the 9th best home record in the league, City have the 9th best away record and probably have more chance of picking up 3 points than if they were playing at home based on this season’s form. There are some positives as far as team news is concerned with Egan and Pandur shaking off knocks to be able to feature, and while Slater will miss out, Alzate and Puerta should make for a decent partnership in his place. For any other stattos out there, Slater is actually the worst player for City this season in terms of G-xG. His total of -3.3 means that he’s scored 3.3 goals fewer than you would have expected him to score with the chances presented to him this season. This perhaps shows that he won’t be too badly missed on Saturday, at least in terms of being a goal threat.

To win the game, City will need to score goals. There haven’t been too many of them recently and even the ones that have been scored don’t really inspire confidence that more are likely to come. Gelhardt scored 2 penalties v Preston, Kamara got a deflected effort v Coventry and Hughes headed a last-minute winner from a set-piece v Sheff Wednesday. Could Saturday be the day for Kyle Joseph to finally break his duck? The struggling striker has been backed this week by former boss Steve Bruce to come good, and an upturn in form would certainly come at the right time. As I mentioned earlier, Regan Slater with -3.3 has the worst G-xG of all players to have featured this season for the Tigers. At -2.2, Joseph has the 2nd worst record at the club. Not that he’s getting much service; his 0.38 shots on target per 90 minutes puts him just ahead of Sean McLoughlin’s 0.32: the last of the stats in this preview I promise.

Teams that are safe generally tend to score and concede more in their remaining fixtures and with us needing to go for it, I can see a high-scoring game by City’s standards. I’m predicting a 2-2 draw which allows me to safely sit on the fence and not predict whether that will be enough to save us or send us down back into League One for the first time since the Covid-19 season.

Hull City possible starting lineup:
Pandur; McLoughlin, Hughes, Egan, Coyle; Puerta, Alzate, Amrabat, Kamara, Gelhardt; Pedro