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Dream run for Hull City

— PHOTO: AP

Phil Brown.

LONDON: Football fans glancing at the Premier League standings won’t be surprised to see Chelsea and Liverpool neck-and-neck at the top and Arsenal in fourth place — but take a look at who’s third.

In its first season in the top flight after being promoted from the League Championship, Hull is flying high with 14 points after back-to-back away victories at Arsenal and Tottenham.

If the Tigers can stay there until the end of the season, a club which was in the fourth tier of English football four years ago and hails from a grimy fishing port on England’s east coast will have a place in the prestigious Champions League.

Manager Phil Brown, virtually unheard of until Hull’s promotion, isn’t surprised that his team is doing so well.

“We’re about three points ahead of our points tally because we didn’t expect to beat Arsenal at the Emirates,” he said after Sunday’s 1-0 victory at Tottenham. “We are ahead of schedule. It is dreamland.

“My hardest job after last week was to keep their feet firmly on the ground and make sure that they weren’t overconfident. I’ve never looked at the league table since the start of the season. Now, I’ll have to start looking.”

Brazilian star Geovanni, a former FC Barcelona and Benfica midfielder, scored with a long-range strike in the 2-1 victory at Arsenal and drove home a powerful free-kick for the winning goal at White Hart Lane on Sunday.

Not surprised

“I’m not surprised at all by our league position,” said Geovanni, who moved to Hull after a season with Manchester City. “We have some good players.”

Hull, which also won at Newcastle, already has three points more than Derby collected in the whole of last season’s Premier League.

Brown, who has added experienced former Middlesbrough midfielder George Boateng to a squad of comparative journeymen players, believes there is nothing lucky about his team’s achievement so far.

While other managers have the luxury of being able to make frequent line-up changes and swap around star players to keep them fresh, Brown has no real choice but to stick with what he has.

“We stayed with the same system with the same personnel and, I don’t think there’s many managers in the Premier League that can say, the same team subs,” he said. “It’s the consistency we’re after.”

He doesn’t accept that Hull only beat Newcastle and Tottenham when they were struggling for form, and won at Arsenal because the Gunners were in a busy spell of matches.

“People keep saying, ‘Was it a good time to play Newcastle, Arsenal, Tottenham?’ I don’t think there’s ever a good time. They are good sides,” Brown said.

Now, he welcomes the two-week break in the Premier League program created by two rounds of World Cup matches, especially as few of his players will be involved.

Hull fans have long spent years seeing their team in the shadows of two more successful local rugby league clubs.

While they also welcome the sight of the Tigers’ position in the standings, the bookmakers will bring them down to earth. Despite its title odds being slashed from 5,000-1 to 1,000-1, Hull remains second favourite behind Stoke to go back down. — AP

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