Hull's success can help Premier League image

They said it couldn’t happen, it wasn’t possible. Hull City, promoted to The Premier League via the play-offs could not maintain their top flight status.
Well on the evidence of their first two games, it is definitely possible. And for the good of The Premier League and the integrity of the competition, it would be great if Hull could stay up this season.
The Premier League is damned as a four-horse race from season to season, with those promoted regularly disappearing the following year, often with the ignominy and embarrassment of being left trailing in the wake of mediocre, sub mid-table opposition.
But The Tigers could be a ray of light for The Premier League. They have now secured four points from their opening two skirmishes and there are many sides in this league who lack the qualities they possess.
They showed at Ewood Park that they could not only provide a physical challenge to an established Premier League outfit, but offered enough glimpses of attacking impetus and a goal threat to suggest they won’t be down by Christmas as many who have gone before them. And all the better for the English top-flight.
The curse of most of the sides who emerge from the play-offs into the dizzy heights of The Premier League is an ability to concede goals as frequently and predictably as German trains. You could almost set your watch by Derby conceding last season.
The sides that come up for each new campaign are immediately condemned as cannon fodder – free points for the big-four.
The league seems comfortably divided into three invariable camps: those who come up and fight it out with a couple of straggling sides who lose their way during the season, those mid-table sides whose most lofty ambition is to finish fifth or sixth and claim a place in the Uefa Cup and the top four, who reside, like Stonehenge, as an ancient immovable object at the top of the league.
Now those four will stay the same this season, of that there is little doubt. And Hull will do well to still be in the league come May. But The Tigers have shown they can certainly avoid their almost pre-determined relegation have a good go at finishing in mid-table.
Phil Brown’s side are well organised and, to coin a pun, tigerish in their determination to win the ball back and keep the opposition at bay.
And if Saturday’s trip to Blackburn is anything to go by, they won’t sit back and wait for the axe to fall, but will go at the opposition and give it a damn good go.
And hats off to boss Brown for creating a side capable of going to places like Ewood Park and picking up a point. Rovers turned Ewood into something of a fortress towards the tail end of last season and Hull looked the more likely to emerge with three points as the game petered out into a draw.
It is of course far too early to be cracking open the champagne and organising the end of season party, but it wouldn’t half help the image of the league, if a side could come up from the play-offs and make even a mid-table finish, not just a goal, but a realistic ambition.