**Why The Premier League Is So EASY For Hull City — Transcript & Summary | SozAI** Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/premier-league-easy-hull-city/ Analysis of Hull City's surprising Premier League success, focusing on their defensive strategy and player roles after three games. ## Key Takeaways - Hull City's defensive strategy is highly effective, combining a low block with aggressive ball recovery. - Their recruitment focused on physicality to adapt to Premier League demands. - The 5-4-1 formation allows them to control space and dominate aerial duels. - Ollie McBurnie's role as a target man is crucial for Hull's attacking play. - Despite early success, Hull's approach may be figured out as the season progresses. ## What the video covers - Hull City is one of only eight undefeated Premier League teams after three games, with a better defense than Arsenal. - They have taken points from top teams and won a crucial relegation six-pointer against Coventry. - Hull City's promotion was a statistical overachievement, finishing 23rd in expected performance last season. - The club adopted a large player turnover strategy, recruiting physically suited players for the Premier League. - Hull shifted from a 4-2-3-1 to a 5-4-1 defensive formation, focusing on a mid to low block with deliberate space management. - Their defensive approach involves coordinated challenges and winning aerial duels, especially against crosses. - Hull invites opponents to attack wide areas, where their defenders excel in aerial duels and clearances. - Ollie McBurnie is a key attacking player, excelling in duels and acting as a direct target man. - Hull's defensive structure works in multiple phases of play, contributing to their early-season success. - The video also mentions the creator's upcoming Great North Run and fundraising efforts. ## Chapters 1. 00:00 Introduction and Hull City's Premier League start 2. 01:35 Championship promotion context and statistics 3. 03:04 Transfer strategy and last season's system 4. 04:21 Defensive tactics and space management 5. 05:35 Low block and wide area defensive strategy 6. 06:56 Aerial dominance and key defenders' stats 7. 08:17 Ollie McBurnie's role and performance 8. 09:34 Summary and upcoming fundraising mention 9. 12:06 Closing remarks and thank you Answers ## Questions about this video Why is Hull City performing so well defensively in the Premier League? Hull City uses a 5-4-1 formation with a mid to low block, deliberately leaving spaces to win the ball back and dominating aerial duels to neutralize crosses. What changes did Hull City make from last season to adapt to the Premier League? They overhauled their squad with physically suited players and shifted from a 4-2-3-1 to a 5-4-1 formation, focusing on defensive solidity and direct play. What role does Ollie McBurnie play in Hull City's tactics? McBurnie acts as a direct target man, winning the most duels in the Premier League so far and providing a focal point for Hull's attacking plays. ## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown 00:00 Speaker A Right. Hello, everybody. This is maybe the most requested video we have had of the season so far. How our whole city, if you'll excuse the language, is absolutely just pissing the Premier League. After the first three games, they are one of only eight undefeated sides. They have taken points from two of last year's best teams, won an alleged relegation six-pointer away to Coventry, and are the only team in the whole league yet to concede a goal. So statistically speaking, they are now title challengers with a better defense than Arsenal. Yes, after only three games. So how then are they doing this? How are the great and the good of His Majesty's League of England Barkley Card Premier Division all getting mauled by the Tigers? 00:17 Speaker A I love this. Okay, so two things here. First of all, this is the last video I'm going to record before I do the Great North Run at the weekend. There will be a rather large tedious fundraising thing at the end of this running. I'll explain all of that. And secondly, to understand what Hull are doing, we first need a bit of context. And if you are a whole city fan, you will already know this bit. So like, talk amongst yourselves, reply to that text you're putting off. It'll just be a minute. Statistically speaking, based on the chances created and conceded and the xG created and conceded, the two best teams in the Championship last season were Ipswich and Coventry, who were, you remember, automatically promoted. And in fact, if you go back through the last five years of the Championship, which is all I could personally be bothered to do here, you'll find that of the 10 teams being automatically promoted, only Leeds finished in the top two statistically, but not the top two in the actual league table. Look, Fulham and Bournemouth this year, Burnley and Sheffield United the next year, Leicester and Ipswich, this one was then Leeds and Burnley the following year, and then finally Coventry and Ipswich. And the reason I'm telling you this is to highlight that this stuff is not merely useless statistics. It normally paints a very accurate picture of how a team's season went. So whole City getting promoted to the Premier League despite finishing 23rd statistically, second bottom, is one of the biggest mathematical overachievements I have ever seen in football. So, it's had a lot of people rubbing their grubby little mitts together and predicting if they were going to challenge anything this season, it was going to be Derby County's record low points total. And yet, and yet. So, what is it that's actually happening here other than the fact that it's just been three games? 00:32 Speaker A Well, whole City have done two things that are quite clever. The first one was in the transfer window, which is just have a massive turnover of players, the Sunderland model from last season, and bring in loads of lads who you think are physically, if not necessarily technically, suited to playing in this division. And specifically, they have taken the system they used last season, which was primarily a 4-2-3-1, which had the wingers playing nice and close to Ollie McBurnie, which had the fullbacks being really aggressive. It had them going back to front as quickly and as direct as they can and just not having any pride about that, and this all worked. 00:53 Speaker A You had McBurnie receiving said long balls, barreling into defenders, creating the sort of chaos that Balumi and others would pounce on, and asking Ryan Giles to just do all the creative play from left back. And so what Yakirvic has done is just entirely scrap the parts of that he thinks won't work in the Premier League and reimagine the bits that will. So this season, Hull are setting up in this 5-4-1 shape, which is technically supposed to be like a 3-4-2-1 shape when they get up the pitch, but the game plan is so far removed from get up the pitch that it is essentially just players in the wrong positions here. 01:06 Speaker A A 5-4-1. They now mostly sit in this mid to low block that, you're right, is not as compact as you were expecting it to be. There's usually gaps here between the lines. There's spaces you can potentially exploit. But what's been really impressive about them this season is how they are deliberately leaving those bits of space there so that they can attempt to win the ball back. Like here, you can see the space is right here to be exploited, but they time their jumps and they coordinate their challenges so well that they win the ball back pretty easily. And here again, the midfield could be all the way back here if they were trying to be compact and compress the space, but the pass is almost like they're almost daring you to make it. And when it comes, again, it's a perfectly coordinated defensive leap where you can see that as well as the players going for the ball, they're all on the same wavelength and you've got covering actions from other defenders allowing them to go and do this. And the thing is, I've seen a few people say that what Hull have done really well this season, right, is shutting down this space on the edge of their own box, making it really hard for teams to create in that area. And they definitely do do that. That's happened in a number of games. But what's actually been impressive is that they're not just doing that. They're actually doing the defending much further up the pitch. Because if you just camped on the edge of your own box every single game, you're going to find it really hard to move the ball forward. So, they're trying to get it in the middle of the pitch. That being said, the really clever thing they do is when they're in a low block because then when they do have the three center backs and the two midfielders protecting the space on the edge with the wide players nice and narrow, the space does open up down the flanks and aha have thought Manchester United and Coventry and to a lesser extent Aston Villa, we figured them out. They've left spaces out wide. Let's move the ball out there and attack the box that way. But Hull do quite literally want you to do that because in Egan, Mendy and Ajai, not only do they have three center backs comfortable stepping out to win the ball, but they have also been insanely dominant in the air this season. 34 crosses from Comry, 39 from Man United, which was a 10-year record for them. And either the defenders are stopping them at source by winning the ball or otherwise just putting in enough of a challenge that there is no chance that can be generated from getting there ahead of them. So really what they're doing is they are inviting teams to try and play through them so they can attempt to win the ball on the deck and then they're inviting them to play around them, stick balls into the box because they know they're going to win it in the air. Just cross after cross all being dealt with. And the numbers they're all putting up this season so far are absolutely wild. Like you got John Egan winning over 70% of his ground in his aerial duels. Monster. 01:20 Speaker A You got Semi Ajai around 60% for both of those. Monster. And Noble Mendy already one of the league's leading defenders for blocks, clearances, all-round defensive contributions. And don't get me wrong, this will get figured out sooner rather than later. They're going to have really difficult games, really difficult periods of the season. But regardless, what Hull have done is they have turned up in the Premier League with a defensive structure that works in multiple phases of play and it's been really effective for them. Then at the top of the pitch, I already love watching Ollie McBurnie in the Premier League. Like he's a proper throwback, direct target man that Hull can play into early, long, in the air, on the deck. And if you look at his numbers this season, right, he has won the most duels in the Premier League. And I know it's only been three games. Yes, I get that. But still, that is 270 minutes of football plus stoppages. And nobody, nobody's done what he's done. He's like Prem's hardest ga— 01:35 Speaker A automatically promoted. And in fact, if you go back through the last five years of the Championship, which is all I could personally uh be bothered to do here, you'll find that of the 10 teams being automatically promoted, only leads 01:48 Speaker A finished in the top two statistically, but not the top two in the actual league table. Look, Fulham and Bournemouth this year, Burnley and Sheffield United the next year, Leicester and Ipsswich, this one was then leadeds and Burnley the 02:01 Speaker A following year, and then finally Coventry and Ipsswich. And the reason I'm telling you this is to highlight that this stuff is not merely useless statistics. It normally paints a very accurate picture of how a team's season went. So whole City getting promoted to 02:17 Speaker A the Premier League despite finishing 23rd statistically second bottom is one of the biggest mathematical overachievements I have ever seen in football. So, it's had a lot of people rubbing their grubby little mitts together and predicting if they were going to challenge anything 02:36 Speaker A this season, it was going to be Derby County's record low points total. And yet, and yet. So, what is it that's actually happening here other than the fact that it's just been uh three games? 02:50 Speaker A Well, whole City have done two things that are quite clever. The first one was in the transfer window, which is just have a massive turnover of players. the Sunderland model uh from last season and bring in loads of lads who you think are 03:04 Speaker A physically if not necessarily technically suited to playing in this division and specifically they have taken the system they used last season which was primarily a 4231 which had the wingers playing nice and close to Ollie Mcburnie which had the fullbacks being 03:18 Speaker A really aggressive. It had them going back to front as quickly and as direct as they can and just not having any pride about that and this all worked. 03:27 Speaker A you had with Bernie receiving said long balls, barreling into defenders, creating the sort of chaos that Balumi and others would pounce on and asking Ryan Giles to just do all the creative play from left back. And so what 03:41 Speaker A Yakirvic has done is just entirely scrap the parts of that he thinks won't work in the Premier League and reimagine the bits that will. So this season, Hull are setting up in this 541 shape, which is technically supposed to be like a 3421 03:58 Speaker A shape when they get up the pitch, but the game plan is so far removed from get up the pitch that it is essentially just a players in the wrong positions here. 04:08 Speaker A Uh 541. They now mostly sit in this mid to low block that, you're right, is not as compact as you were expecting it to be. There's usually gaps here between the lines. There's spaces you can potentially exploit. But what's been 04:21 Speaker A really impressive about them this season is how they are deliberately leaving those bits of space there so that they can attempt to win the ball back. Like here you can see the space is right here to be exploited, but they time their 04:36 Speaker A jumps and they coordinate their challenges so well that they win the ball back pretty easily. And here again, the midfield could be all the way back here if they were trying to be compact and compress the space, but the pass is 04:49 Speaker A almost like they're almost daring you to make it. And when it comes, again, it's a perfectly coordinated defensive leap where you can see that as well as the players going for the ball. They're all on the same wavelength and you've got 05:01 Speaker A covering actions from other defenders allowing them to go and do this. And the thing is, I've seen a few people say that what Hull have done really well this season, right, is shutting down this space on the edge of their own box, 05:13 Speaker A making it really hard for teams to create in that area. And they definitely do do that. That's happened in a number of games. But what's actually been impressive is that they're not just doing that. They're actually doing the 05:25 Speaker A defending much further up the pitch. Because if you just camped on the edge of your own box every single game, you're going to find it really hard to move the ball forward. So, they're trying to get it in the middle of the 05:35 Speaker A pitch. That being said, the really clever thing they do is when they're in a low block because then when they do have the three center backs and the two midfielders protecting the space on the edge with the wide players nice and 05:48 Speaker A narrow, the space does open up down the flanks and aha have thought Manchester United and Coventry and to a lesser extent uh Aston Villa, we figured them out. They've left spaces out wide. Let's move the ball out there and attack the 06:04 Speaker A box that way. But Hull do quite literally want you to do that because in Egan, Mendy and Ajai, not only do they have three center backs comfortable stepping out to win the ball, but they have also been insanely 06:19 Speaker A dominant in the air this season. 34 crosses from Comry, 39 from Man United, which was a 10year record for them. and either the defenders are stopping them at source by winning the ball or otherwise just putting in enough of a 06:33 Speaker A challenge that there is no chance that can be generated from getting there ahead of them. So really what they're doing is they are inviting teams to try and play through them so they can attempt to win the ball on the deck and 06:44 Speaker A then they're inviting them to play around them, stick balls into the box because they know they're going to win it in the air. Just cross after cross all being dealt with. And the numbers they're all putting up this season so 06:56 Speaker A far are absolutely wild. Like you got John Eaggan winning over 70% of his ground in his aerial jewels. Monster. 07:04 Speaker A You got Semi a Jai around 60% for both of those. Monster. And Noble Mendy already one of the league's leading defenders for blocks, clearances, all round defensive contributions. And don't get me wrong, this will get figured out sooner rather than later. They're going 07:21 Speaker A to have really difficult games, really difficult periods of the season. But regardless, what Hull have done is they have turned up in the Premier League with a defensive structure that works in multiple phases of play and it's been 07:37 Speaker A really effective for them. Then at the top of the pitch, I already love watching Ollie McBurnie in the Premier League. Like he's a proper throwback, direct target man that Hull can play into early, long, in the air, on the 07:49 Speaker A deck. And if you look at his numbers this season, right, he has won the most jewels in the Premier League. And I know it's it's only been three games. Yes, I get that. But still, that is 270 minutes 08:03 Speaker A of football plus stoppages. And nobody nobody's done what he's done. He's like Prem's hardest gangs all on his own. But just to call him some kind of scrapper that just gets the team up the pitch when they kick along would be doing him 08:17 Speaker A a massive disservice. Because if you look at some of his other stats, he's in the top 10% for distance covered and the top 20% for distance running, which you do not expect from your proper meat and drink egg and chip center forward at the 08:33 Speaker A very top of the field. And then you look at his heat map already this season. And yes, there is a bit where you would expect him to be. Sure, that's what a number nine does. Obviously, plenty of boxer as well, but look at the channels. 08:44 Speaker A like he's spending more time on the ball and off it out here because as the lone front man, he is required to a get out to close players down when the ball goes out left and right. So stopping his 08:57 Speaker A teammates from having to jump out of position in the block. That's really really hard work. Like you see here, these are really, really hard yards to be running late in the game, but they're also stopping the wide player from 09:10 Speaker A getting dragged towards the ball. And that's really important. not a lot of center forwards will do this for you for 90 minutes. And also B, if the long ball is coming to relieve the pressure, go and get somewhere you can win it. Go and 09:23 Speaker A make it harder for the opposition to send that straight back the other way. And if that involves putting yourself up against a fullback instead of a center back, then get out there and do it. And Ollie McBurnie is getting out there and 09:34 Speaker A doing that. Then of course there's his actual job, which is to be a focal point to receive the ball to make the correct decision. like this should have been an assist for him uh but wasn't. If he can 09:45 Speaker A keep doing stuff like that, then he's going to give Hull enough going forward as well as them already having enough um at the back. Look, it's it's three games. It's going to be a long old season for Hull. But this is how you do 09:59 Speaker A it when you turn them in the Premier League. You just completely change your system. You get real real physical players who can give you a chance to compete and then you impose a game model on them that they're good at and that 10:12 Speaker A hurts teams. And it doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to be 3 4 2 1 five at the back. Clever stuff like this. But Hull have done all the basics. 10:20 Speaker A You have had the basics done to you by the Tigers. It should go. And yes, okay, they're conceding a lot of chances. And yes, okay, they're not creating a lot of chances and that's probably not going to be sustainable in the long run. But so 10:33 Speaker A many teams this season are going through a massive period of change. This is the most amount of new managers we've ever had. Nobody really looks that good this season, but Hull in their teething stage, no pun intended, um are putting 10:48 Speaker A points on the board while they're improving and that is massive. So yes, there you go. That is why everyone is getting mauled by the Tigers. I cannot uh stop doing that. Now, uh, the running. This is going to be me. By the 11:01 Speaker A time you watch this video, I may have already done it. I'm not sure when it's going out. It's Sunday. It's a Great North Run. And if you've been following the channel at all, you will know that the reason, this is my running graph 11:10 Speaker A from the air, by the way. I've gone berserk. Uh, the reason we're doing that is we're trying to raise 10,000 for charity this year. Uh, and I needed to raise five grand of that in this run, and we're so nearly there. And I'm just, 11:24 Speaker A this is going to be overly long, but I'm going to say it anyway. Right. The Great North Run has something like 65,000 people doing it. And they don't release the numbers for this, but it's estimated that like somewhere between 35 and 11:37 Speaker A 40,000 people are fundraising right as part of uh that run. And it's not a competition obviously, but Just Giving do have a leaderboard for events. And out of like 40,000 35,000 people, 32nd or was when I got maybe it's higher. I 11:59 Speaker A don't know. That's where it was when I got the screen grab. 32nd out of 40,000 or something like 0.01%. 12:06 Speaker A And you've done that. Not me. I could run around all year and that wouldn't do any of that. You've actually you lot have done that by being like so generous um with your money. So, if you have donated already, I genuinely feel 12:20 Speaker A overwhelmed when I start to consider it all. I start welling up genuinely, which is quite quite mad. And we're we're nearly there. We have genuinely nearly did it. Nearly done it. And I didn't think we'd be able to do it. So, um that 12:31 Speaker A is crazy. Thank you so much if you donated already. If you haven't and you're tempted, like literally anything is useful. Like, Mind will make money go so so far. They do such vital work uh for mental health services here in the 12:42 Speaker A UK. The link is in the description uh down below. That's really long. I probably lost quite a lot of people doing that. I should have kept it neater, but that's just how I feel. And this is the last video I'll do before 12:52 Speaker A the run. So, I just I just wanted to say that you can get me across all the social medias at Clear C L E R L Y where I will obviously be telling you uh how I got on, what went wrong with the body, 13:01 Speaker A how it all felt a bit uh and that. And if you haven't already subscribed to the channel, please do because people asked for this video. So, I was like, that sounds fun. We'll do it. So, we do the 13:12 Speaker A things you tell us uh to do. Uh, I'm gonna go now. Gonna go now because I got to go do a big run. Uh, thanks for watching. Love you all. Goodbye. Topics: Hull City Premier League football tactics defensive strategy Ollie McBurnie 5-4-1 formation aerial duels Championship promotion football analysis Adam Clery --- This is the markdown twin of https://sozai.app/transcript/premier-league-easy-hull-city/ — the same content, without the markup. Published by SozAI (https://sozai.app). Reuse and quotation are allowed with attribution and a link back. 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