Mark Hughes pleaded for time to turn Manchester City around after his side were forced to settle for a frustrating 2-2 draw against Hull. Hughes had come under scrutiny for the first time since he took over at Eastlands after City’s dismal run of three successive defeats and Sunday’s result left his team dangerously close to the bottom three.
After falling behind to Daniel Cousin’s early goal, Stephen Ireland’s double had put the visitors in control. But Hull midfielder Geovanni, released by City in the close-season, returned to haunt his former club with a deflected free-kick equalizer in the second half.
Despite Hull’s fine start to life in the top flight, it is a fixture City’s Abu Dhabi-based owners would probably be expecting to win, but Hughes is convinced the battling performance showed he can make his mark on the squad, given time.
“We’re not the finished article yet, we’re very early in our development and it’s going to take time,” he said.
“I’ve said this week that along the way there will be a little bit of pain and we’ve gone through some of that already,” Hughes said.
“But hopefully the way we played today, with top sides coming up, will help us. I think we’ll go out and show what we can do,” he said.
Having crept back into the lead after Tal Ben-Haim’s gaffe had gifted Cousin the opening goal, Hughes believes his team could have taken maximum points.
But, despite losing goalkeeper Joe Hart for around a month with an ankle injury, Hughes, whose side have upcoming matches against Arsenal and Manchester United, was satisfied with a livelier away display after criticism of the team’s efforts on the road.
“We needed a positive result and a positive performance and I think that’s what we got,” he said.
“Ideally we’d have preferred three points but the key today was to have an improvement on away performances. In recent weeks they haven’t been anywhere near what they needed to be to get points at Premier League level,” the Welshman said.
“We’ve got a point, it could have been three, but we’ll take it and it sets us up for the games we have ahead of us,” he said.
Hull boss Phil Brown paid tribute to Brazilian star Geovanni, who scored his sixth goal for the Tigers. Asked if he would trade the former Barcelona midfielder for his compatriot Robinho, Brown said: “Not in a million years. Why? Because mine was free and I can’t afford £32.5 million!”
“In fairness, Robinho came up to me after the game and shook my hand. I think he spoke Spanish, which I know a little bit of. He seems a nice fellow and a good footballer, but so is Geo. He’s a talented lad,” Brown said.
“The lad is very calm and if there was any pressure on him I didn’t detect it,” he said.
Doping fears prevented former US Open champion Emma Raducanu from treating insect bites on the eve of the Australian Open, she said, with players increasingly wary about ingesting contaminated substances. The British player was speaking in the wake of high-profile doping cases involving Iga Swiatak and Jannik Sinner. “I would say all of us are probably quite sensitive to what we take on board, what we use,” the 22-year-old said, recalling an incident on Friday. “I got really badly bitten by, I don’t know what, like ants, mosquitoes, something. I’m allergic, I guess,” she added. The bites “flared up and swelled up really a
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