Tigers ‘fully focused’ on Southampton
Hull City’s full focus is on going through Southampton within the Championship play-off ultimate at Wembley on Saturday afternoon, assistant supervisor Dean Holden has stated.
Holden joined Mark Chapman on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Monday Night Club amid continued uncertainty over the fixture as we await the verdict of the English Football League’s independent disciplinary commission’s investigation into allegations Southampton spied on Middlesbrough’s coaching session forward of the primary leg of their semi-final earlier this month.
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Holden stated: “We’re fully preparing to play Southampton on Saturday at 16:30 BST – that’s what we’ve been told by the EFL. If anything changes in the next couple days then we’ll have to adapt to that.”
Holden accepted the grueling Championship season, which options 46 video games and common intervals of three-days between video games, means they will adapt if needed.
“The key thing for us as staff is to make sure to be as concise as possible,” he stated. “There’s obviously going to be a lot of emotion, a lot of nervous energy, going into such a big occasion and for us it’s about the players going out there and not overthinking.
“We’ve tailored nicely to groups that we’re taking part in in opposition to, to endure quite a lot of accidents and we have discovered methods to win.
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“We can’t afford to take our eyes off it and start trying to overcomplicate this situation.”
He added: “It’s such a unique situation. We’ve had two great results against Southampton. We’ve got a dossier on every team we’ve played against, we watched both semi-finals in detail. We’ve got a good understanding on all the teams.
“The full focus is and can stay on Southampton. If we’re asking our analyst workforce, which is sort of small, to organize for 2 video games we’re asking for issues.”
Holden said there was a ‘great atmosphere’ in training and: “There would not appear any nervousness in the mean time. We cannot get away from the noise, it is all over the place you flip, however the gaffer’s [Sergej Jakirovic] been nice together with his messaging.
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“We’ve trained as normal on Monday. It won’t affect our training until we get a result [from the commission]”
You can take heed to that on BBC Sounds highlights of the show here. Dean Holden’s interview is at 48:12.