Hull City are back in the Premier League. Recent play-off winners mostly went down.
Oli McBurnie's stoppage-time goal beat Middlesbrough 1-0 at Wembley on 23 May and sent Hull City back to the Premier League after a decade away.
What happened
Hull are in advanced talks for Gremio teenager Gabriel Mec at a guaranteed 17m euros plus 3m in add-ons, a club-record-scale outlay that signals how the owner intends to attack the top flight.
Hull City beat Middlesbrough 1-0 in the Championship play-off final on . Oli McBurnie scored the only goal in the fifth minute of added time. Hull finished sixth in the Championship, the first team since Blackpool in 2010 to go up from that place. They go up with Coventry City and Ipswich Town.
The way to Wembley was unusual. Southampton beat Middlesbrough in the semi-finals, but the EFL, which runs the league, threw them out of the final for illegally spying on their opponents. Middlesbrough took their place. So Hull beat a team that had already lost its semi-final. That changes nothing about the matches they now face.
Hull’s first Premier League match is on . Owner Acun Ilıcalı has promised to spend this summer, and deals are already moving. Goalkeeper Jack Butland is set to arrive from Rangers, with Ivor Pandur going the other way. Steven Alzate is due a medical after leaving Brighton. Talks for Grêmio’s Gabriel Mec have reached €17m guaranteed plus €3m in add-ons. The manager is Sergej Jakirović.
Sources: Sports Mole, ESPN, EFL, Premier League
The Pattern
Two of the last five play-off winners stayed up. We looked at the last five clubs that won the Championship play-off final and how their first Premier League season went. Three went straight back down. The two that stayed up did opposite things in their first summer. Nottingham Forest bought a whole new squad, and Brentford kept the one it had.
Show the other 3 cases
The Read
The case for a busy summer at Hull is that it has already started. The owner has promised money in public, three deals are moving before pre-season has really begun, and the Mec talks, €20m in all for a teenager, show a club buying for the Premier League. Five or more signings by looks possible for a club getting Premier League TV money for the first time in a decade.
The doubt is that spending fast also gave Southampton their 12-point season, as well as Forest’s escape. Hull finished sixth in the Championship and won the final by one kick. Their manager has never led a Premier League match, and their main target is 18 years old with three senior goals for Grêmio. Three of the last five clubs in their place went straight back down, and the two that survived did opposite things, so there is no simple recipe.
Disclaimer
Hunch works only from sources that are publicly available, and publishes on the basis of analysis of that material. We do not form an editorial opinion or take sides, we give a simpler and wider view of news that already exists. If information in a source we used was inaccurate, distorted, or later disputed but had already entered our analysis, Hunch accepts no liability for that. Predictions are not advice. Phase 1 markets use Hunch Points, not money.
Published by Hunch under the Editorial Code. Complaints and corrections: /contact/.