Hull opt for direct route to earn an historic first victory

Hull City 2 Fulham 1:THERE ARE games that the Hull City manager Phil Brown thinks the Tigers can win this season, and others - perhaps against better teams, as he carefully put it - when they will only pick up points if those teams underestimate them. Few are likely to fall into that trap after this.

Having gone behind to a headed goal by Seol Ki-Hyeon in the eighth minute, and been outplayed for much of the opening quarter, Hull had a goal out of nothing from their new Brazilian Geovanni and it acted like a shot of adrenaline.

Reminded that their opponents were only human, City shook themselves, rolled up their sleeves and began to compete so effectively that by the time Caleb Folan side-footed the winner in the 81st minute they were bullying Fulham in much the same manner as they did many of their opponents in the Championship last season.

It was not complicated stuff but nor, despite the Fulham manager Roy Hodgson's pointedly alluding to the number of long balls pumped into his team's penalty area, was it simply a case of hitting it at the big, quick front man - Marlon King for an hour, then Folan - and hoping for a knockdown.

Geovanni, roaming around in front of the midfield, was available in space for the shorter ball, and hit a wonderful curling drive to kick-start City's season, while George Boateng looked close to his best, running hard, tackling incisively, and hitting passes of vision as well as accuracy.

But it was City's dynamism which knocked Fulham out of the stride.

"We passed the ball in the first half, we got it down and had the tempo I'm looking for, but we didn't get that in the second half. They were very quick to push up, pressurise and force errors," Hodgson acknowledged.

It was one such incident, Craig Fagan's presence on his heels prompting Paul Konchesky into a tangle that allowed Fagan the time and space to square the ball for Folan to raise the roof.

Opposing managers will also note both Fagan and Folan were substitutes.

"I looked at our bench and was really pleased at the options that I had," said Brown, and the injection of pace at the right time proved crucial.

Again, Fulham should have expected nothing less, assuming they had done their homework, as Brown used Folan in the same way last season, usually as a replacement for Dean Windass.

Having been assistant to Sam Allardyce when Bolton came up in 2001 (and stayed up after making a good start), Brown accepted the parallels but not when it comes to style.

"Any team in the Premier League, whether it be Bolton or, coincidentally Blackburn and Fulham in the same year, who all survived, we're all after a good start. Roy Hodgson will have been looking to get points on the board," said Brown.

"But as for being direct, I thought we played more football than that.

"If you want to talk about direct football, in the last 10 or 12 minutes of the game [centre-half Brede] Hangeland was playing centre-forward for them."

With their next fixtures at Blackburn and at home to Wigan, City can be hopeful of adding to an initial return which means they have already achieved seven per cent of their target for the season.

Certainly nobody at the KC Stadium was drawing over-optimistic conclusions from one match against a team whose players are still getting to know each other, but there was a quiet satisfaction at making a start that suggested they are not going to be quite the whipping boys the pundits say.

• Guardian Service