International break offers Hull City time to take stock, insists Tigers forward

Hull Daily Mail – HULL, Allahyar Sayyadmanesh believes the international break has come at a good time for Hull City to take stock of their development in recent weeks under Liam Rosenior.

City went into the final break of the season on the back of a 3-1 home loss to Burnley followed by a 1-1 draw with Reading. They can now enjoy a spell away from the training ground, before coming back next week to prepare for the visit of Rotherham United.

Having briefly flirted with the play-offs after back-to-back home wins at the end of January and beginning of February, City have won just once in their last eight games to leave themselves safely entrenched in mid-table. It was a prospect that appeared to be a pipe dream prior to Rosenior’s arrival when it looked like a second successive relegation battle was on the cards.

When the Tigers return to action, they’ll have just eight games of the campaign remaining to finish as strongly as possible in a bid to build some momentum going into what will be a busy summer at the MKM Stadium.

“Of course, we should have won the game,” the Iranian told Hull Live. “We have to take those opportunities, but the international break is good for us to work on some points and improve for the rest of the season.

“It was a cheap goal to concede, but these things do happen in football but it’s something that we can improve. After getting the first goal, we didn’t build on the lead and that’s an area we will look at.

“We started quickly, we got into some good positions including myself. We had some good opportunities in both the first and second halves but we didn’t make use of them.”

City were frustrated by Gavin Ward’s decision not to give a penalty in the first period for what appeared to be a handball inside the Reading box, but Allahyar says the players must focus on doing their jobs, and leave discussions surrounding the referee to the manager.

“I think our job is to focus on our jobs as players, and let the manager speak about that, but I do think the first half we should have had a penalty in the box for handball and in the second half on Dimi (tackle on Pelkas),” he added.