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Iain Dowie fired up for the heat of Hull's relegation battle
Hull City manager Iain Dowie suggested on Tuesday that the Yorkshire club could be "cooking on gas" by the end of the week but only after he had done his best to turn up the metaphorical heat on relegation rivals West Ham United.
With time quickly running out in the increasingly tense battle to avoid the drop from the Premier League, the mind games began in earnest when Dowie resorted to psychological warfare.
He suggested the mounting pressure of the survival race would take its toll on West Ham – the club he supported as a boy and then served as a player during the 1990s – rather than his own team.
A Hull City win against Aston Villa at the KC Stadium on Wednesday night would put Dowie’s club level on 31 points with West Ham counterpart Gianfranco Zola’s side, whom he said were “massively, very much in sight”.
Dowie added: “If we win our game in hand, if we put decent points on the board in the next two games, we’ll be right in the shake-up. This week has got to bring a win; we’re at that stage of the season now.
“It would give us the chance to put the pressure on West Ham. I know what it’s like to play under pressure there, and it’s not easy.
“It’s what this game is about – pressure. Last Saturday at Birmingham [Hull drew 0-0] at the end you enjoy it but at the time it’s a hugely stressful environment. We can’t wait for the game to come around.
“Three points against Villa would change the whole picture and that’s what we’ve got to look at getting.
“If we were able to put back-to-back wins together at home all of a sudden, then we’re cooking on gas. That’s something that we’re capable of doing.”
On Saturday, Hull host a Sunderland side who have not won a league game away from Wearside since the opening day of the season, but only the most optimistic of the home supporters will believe Villa can be beaten by a team walloped 4-1 by Burnley on their last time out on Humberside.
“If you worried about Aston Villa too much then you wouldn’t sleep but we’ve got to play to our strengths,” added Dowie.
“We’ve got to make the likes of Gabriel Agbonlahor, John Carew, Stewart Downing, Ashley Young and James Milner look like average players and we will do that by outworking them and concentrating on our quality.
“I want to see us build on the passing game we saw in the draw at Birmingham and look to give them something to worry about. Our fans were magnificent but they don’t give a standing ovation at the final whistle for nothing. They saw a gutsy, hearts-out display from us with a good bit of quality.”
Dowie will resist the temptation to go out all guns blazing against Villa and will deploy a lone striker, probably Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink.
“It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to see that there’s not a lot we’ve done wrong in that system,” said Dowie.
“We have to hang on in games and keep a foothold. It can’t be ‘they attack, we attack’ like it was against Portsmouth [Hull lost an entertaining game 3-2], that’s suicide when you look at Villa’s goal threats.”
Dowie added: “But it’s about the personnel you have in that system. We talk about systems too much – it’s about desire and hunger, about who wants it most.
“At Birmingham I thought we had a group of individuals who showed how much they want it. That amount of desire and endeavour deserves reward.
“If there’s criticism of the system, then fine it’s on me. I’d rather that than let it be on the players.”
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