Match Preview: Hull City v Sunderland

Photo by Clint Hughes/Getty Images

Hull City v Sunderland • MKM Stadium • 745pm

TV: Streaming passes available to UK and USA-based supporters for £6.99 at safc.com.

Tickets: This is an ‘all-paper tickets’ fixture, and we were allocated 2336 tickets but it appears sold out as they’re not available online.

Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images

Last time out!

Opposition view

After a disappointing afternoon up at Tynecastle, Regis Le Bris’s Sunderland side travel south to Humberside to take on Hull City tonight.

From the outside looking in, The Tigers are a complete basket case. They sacked Liam Rosenior at

the end of last season, replacing him with Jurgen Klopp from Wish, sacked him, and appointed Ruben Selles, who’d done an outstanding job at Reading.

Selles seemed to do OK – under his leadership Hull beat both us and Sheffield United away from home, and of his 28 games he won 9, drew 8 and lost 11 and kept them up. Not brilliant, but something to build on, it would have seemed.

Despite guiding them to safety, Selles was sacked, and it shows how highly he’s thought of that he was quickly offered the Sheffield United job after the departure of Chris Wilder.

Hull appointed Bosnian manager Sergej Jakirovic, who’d left Kayserispor by mutual consent after only having joined them in January. He does have an impressive managerial record all told, managing almost 300 games and achieving a 60% win ratio, but it’s a huge change from managing mostly in Eastern Europe to the East Riding of Yorkshire, so who knows how that one will play out.

Transfer wise, a number of players have left Hull, with four new additions – the most notable being a big-money (£3.5m) deal for Colombian 22-year-old midfielder Gustavo Puerta from Bayer Leverkusen. Puerta had spent last season on loan at Hull, and it was the player who activated an option in that agreement to join the club. Whether or not the club would have exercised that option is another matter altogether.

Photo by Sebastian Widmann/Getty Images

Jakirovic managed Dinamo Zagreb in the Champions League, and is a good, experienced manager in Eastern Europe

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Sunderland view

The preseason’s progressing nicely for Sunderland in some respects – we’ve got minutes into players’ legs and on Saturday at Hearts we saw players get more than 45 minutes of action as we begin to ramp things up.

Of course, the biggest concern watching the preseason games to date would be our lack of goal threat, and how soft we looked at the back on Saturday. It’s certain the club will address these issues between now and the end of the preseason fixture list, but it would be nice to see a more sturdy performance tonight, with some attacking threat on display too.

After fielding a strong XI to start the game on Saturday, it’s likely we’ll see a ‘second choice’ team start tonight’s game, as well as the likes of Patrick Roberts and Habib Diarra, who started on the bench on Saturday. Hopefully, we’ll also get our first look at Reinildo, too. An appearance for imminent arrival Granit Xhaka is unlikely however – he played on Sunday, and I would expect he’ll get his first run out in the Betis game.

Wilson Isidor and Nectar Triantis will be given fitness tests before the game after missing out on Saturday, while the likes of Blondy Nna Noukeu, Jenson Jones, Alan Browne, Patrick Roberts, Reinildo, Timor Tuterov, Trey Ogunsuyi, Habib Diarra, Ahmed Abdullahi, Milan Aleksic, Tom Lavery, Zak Johnson, and Harrison Jones could all feature.

Whether the likes of Rusyn, Ba, Pembele and Poveda are given a run out or not remains to be seen – I suspect we’ve seen the last of them in a Sunderland shirt but we may get a surprise!

Still definitely on the sidelines are the likes of Luke O’Nien, Dennis Cirkin, Aji Alese, Anthony Patterson and Chris Rigg.

Photo by Ian Horrocks/Sunderland AFC via Getty Images

Director of Football Florent Ghisolfi with new signing Reinildo

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Previous friendlies versus Hull

30 July 2021
Sunderland 2-1 Hull • Stadium of Light
A last minute goal from Will Grigg gave the lads a 2-1 preseason win. Ross Stewart had opened the scoring for Lee Johnson’s League One Sunderland against Grant McCann’s Championship team Hull.

Photo by Ian Horrocks/Sunderland AFC via Getty Images

24 July 2010
Hull City 2-4 Sunderland • Estadio Municipal, Albufuria

This game on the Algarve was a memorable one for Frazier Campbell, who scored four goals in the first 34 minutes as Sunderland ran out 4-2 winners. A Craig Fagen goal from the spot and a Nick Barmby strike were all the visitors – who included ex Sunder;and players Paul McShane and Kevin Kilbane – could muster.

Photo by Richard Sellers/Sportsphoto/Allstar via Getty Images

18 December 2002
Hull City 1-0 Sunderland • Kingston Communications Stadium

Not a pre-season friendly, but a rare mid-season friendly, as Premier League Sunderland were invited to play the first game against fourth-tier Hull in their new stadium. The game was for the ‘Raich Carter Trophy’ and a strong Sunderland team, featuring the likes of Stefan Schwarz, Emerson Thome, Marcus Stewart and Julio Arca went down 1-0 to a Steve Melton goal.

Photo by Matthew Ashton/EMPICS via Getty Images

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