Everything Hull City head coach Liam Rosenior said on the striker debate and Noah Ohio
Hull City have opted to play without a recognised number nine in recent weeks
The subject of strikers has been one of the major backdrops of 2024 so far for Hull City and head coach Liam Rosenior and remains the biggest discussion point among fans on the terraces.
Such a phenomenon is nothing new, of course, with the false nine an age-old tactic used by managers, and something Rosenior himself did at the back end of last season when he was without all his strikers including both Oscar Estupinan and Benjamin Tetteh.
It has, however, created plenty of discourse in recent weeks with the City boss opting against playing January signings Billy Sharp, Noah Ohio and Aaron Connolly in some games from the start, instead preferring to create a more fluid front quartet of Jaden Philogene, Anass Zaroury, Abdulkadir Omur and Fabio Carvalho
that the Manchester City striker on loan at the MKM Stadium would have been operating in the traditional number nine role, had he not picked up a knee injury which has ruled him out until mid-April.
Rosenior’s decision to not utilise Sharp more coupled with Ohio’s bit-part role and Connolly’s injury struggles have been consistent questions from fans, so with that in mind, Hull Live sat down with Liam Rosenior and asked the City boss to explain his decision-making and answer those fans’ questions directly.
Here’s what he said….
“My job is always to pick what I think is the best team. There’s loads of different characteristics to what a team looks like and how we need to look to be successful. There’s loads of data, there’s loads of metrics on it.
“As a team, when I play, I don’t like calling it no strikers because we have strikers in the striker position. Our metrics are actually really, really good when we play without a recognised striker in terms of our pressing, in terms of the amount of times we win the ball back, in terms of the amount of times we successfully build into the opposition’s path, in terms of our possession statistics and the control and dominance we have in the game, all of the metrics are telling me we’re a play-off team.
“If you go through the season our points total, the goals that we’ve scored, the goals we’ve conceded – we are literally on track to finish in the play-offs.
“So my job is to pick a team and look at the bigger picture. I need this team to grow. They’re new players. It takes time for them to create connections in the final third, but if I don’t play them and I don’t get them to connect, we won’t see the maximum potential of (Anass) Zaroury or Fabio (Carvalho) of Abdush (Omur) of Ozan. They’re outstanding players who I believe can take us and play at the next level.
“They haven’t scratched their potential yet because they’ve played eight games together. I want us to peak in the play-offs, so we’re going to have to swallow the fact we dropped two points at Birmingham sometimes, we have to swallow the fact that maybe we don’t win a game because my job is to get us promoted. To do that, I have to make us peak at the right time and I feel like we’re on track to do that.”
