Hull City’s Journey: From Championship Survival to Premier League Ambitions
On a baking spring bank holiday, Hull gathered in front of City Hall and listened to a man who has made the city believe again. Sergej Jakirovic stepped out on to the balcony, looked down at 40,000 delirious supporters and delivered the line that will live in club folklore.
“I only had one task before the season – to stay in the Championship … I failed. We’re going to the Premier League!”
Two days earlier, Oli McBurnie’s late winner at Wembley had finished off Middlesbrough in the Championship playoff final, a 1-0 victory that sealed one of the most unlikely promotions English football has seen in years. Hull had clung on to their second-tier status in 2024-25 only on goal difference. Twelve months later they were climbing through the trapdoor in the opposite direction.
Jakirovic, the imposing former centre-half with a storyteller’s charm, had turned survival specialists into dreamers.
From miracle makers to relegation certainties
Three months on, the bunting has gone and the mood has shifted. The same Hull side that danced its way to Wembley glory is being dismissed as cannon fodder. Bookmakers have them nailed on for the drop. Pundits have lined up to say the same.
On a podcast this week, former England forwards Carlton Cole and Joe Cole mocked their chances. “Hull are gone, man,” Joe Cole said. “They have spent £70m and I’d be stunned if they stay up. They have come in through the back door, they’ve slipped in.”
The jibes went down badly on Humberside. Tigers fans raged. Their head coach did not. He filed it away as fuel.
Such barbs, he insisted, do not rattle him. Before Manchester United’s visit to the MKM Stadium on Saturday lunchtime, the 49‑year‑old walked into his press conference with the same swagger that marked his promotion run.
“I’m buzzing,” he said. No hint of trepidation. Just relish.
“Of course there’s a very big gap between the Championship and Premier League. We’re up against the best teams, players and managers and I’ve seen all the predictions. But it’s a great motivation to prove them wrong because we don’t have anything to lose.
“What we did last season was a very big achievement, but this is football and what happened yesterday doesn’t matter any more. We want to improve and show that we can develop to do even better as a team – and of course we need another miracle to survive. It will be an even bigger achievement than winning promotion if we manage to stay up. We need 40 points, so everything is very clear.”
Forty points. One simple target in a league that rarely shows mercy.
“We’re not here by accident”
Hull, a city too often used as a punchline, has started to walk a little taller under Jakirovic. Promotion has not just lifted a football club; it has given the place a jolt of pride.
So when the Coles ridiculed Hull’s presence at the top table, the head coach did not hold back.
“It was stupid and disrespectful towards the club and players because we earned everything on the pitch – nobody gave us anything for free,” he said. “It’s not fair, especially when it’s coming from ex-players who know how hard players work to reach the Premier League.
“If they were in my position they would fight, so it’s easy to say we’ll finish 20th, but can they bet on that? They can put everything on that or they can lose, so we will see. But we’re not here by accident.”
The fight, for him, is instinctive.
Born in Mostar, in what was then Yugoslavia, and raised in Metkovic in Croatia, Jakirovic grew up with the sound of fighter planes and the reality of sheltering from bombs during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Relegation scraps and pundit snipes do not keep him awake at night.
“I always sleep like a baby because this is just sport at the end of the day,” he said with a smile. “I have to be fresh on Saturday; I also need to show my potential and prove that I can handle this stage. And I don’t have any doubt because I’ve showed already that I’m capable of doing some great things.”
His playing days took him through Slovakia, Slovenia and Bulgaria before he turned to coaching and embarked on a restless managerial journey: eight clubs in nine years, each one a rung on the ladder that eventually led to East Yorkshire last summer.
A bold rebuild and a fragile miracle
If last season’s surge was built on momentum and clarity, this campaign begins amid flux. Hull’s high-profile chairman, Acun Ilicali, has doubled down on ambition. He has backed Jakirovic publicly, promising to keep faith with him even if the club go down, and he has backed him in the market too.
Eleven new signings have arrived, the club’s transfer record has been broken twice, and more faces are expected. Some of those additions are already in the treatment room. The recruitment drive has been labelled scattergun by critics who see a squad patched together rather than carefully constructed.
Jakirovic hears that noise as well. He does not entirely disagree with the need for patience.
“We’re expecting three or four more players,” he said. “We’ve signed some good players with potential, but I’m also aware that they need more time to adapt and build chemistry with the team.
“Mr Chairman and I have had a very good connection since our first meeting and we do everything together. In all decisions, we are always speaking and trying to improve our team in many ways.”
The partnership has already delivered one miracle. It now faces a far steeper climb.
This is Hull’s fourth promotion to the Premier League since 2008. The club knows both sides of the coin: the euphoria of going up, the brutality of coming back down. That history hangs over this latest adventure, a reminder that romance alone does not keep you in the division.
Yet as Manchester United roll into town, Hull’s head coach stands exactly where he wants to be – in the glare, on the edge, challenging a league that expects him to fail.
He has already turned one impossible brief on its head. The question now is whether he can conjure an even greater trick and make Hull’s stay among the elite last longer than the celebrations on that City Hall balcony.
