Hull City v Millwall: A question of time as ‘crazy’ Tim Walter makes baby steps forward

Hull City’s self-styled “crazy gaffer” is only just getting going but whatever else he lacks, he believes he has the buy-in of his players for a radical new approach – and even Acun Ilicali’s chequebook cannot provide that.

Tim Walter is blazing a trail for a “unique” style of football which should be thrilling, but not without its mishaps.

As he points out, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, and ask him what the Tigers need to be better at against that most quintessentially rugged of English football teams, Millwall, to East Yorkshire on Saturday and the list is a mile long.

He still needs players but at least things are improving on that front, with Charlie Hughes, Oscar Zambrano and Mason Burstow having had a week’s tutelage in Walterball. Chris Bedia arrived on Thursday – with Jean Michael Seri’s move to Saudi Arabia confirmed the next morning – and summer signing Cody Drameh is fit to make a belated debut.

Given this regime’s record of last-minute shopping, you can be pretty confident they will not be the last arrivals before Friday’s 11pm deadline.

To look at the squad list on the back of the programme, things appear to be coming together for the German coach but it will take more than one transfer window to get to where he is heading.

“Every new signature is good for us, it’s a new step and especially the first period of the transfer window is maybe a foundation for the upcoming season,” says Walter.

“We have a lot of signings but we lost a lot of players who scored a lot of goals so we have to bring in new players with a new philosophy, you can’t do it in one period.

Hull City’s self-styled “crazy gaffer” is only just getting going but whatever else he lacks, he believes he has the buy-in of his players for a radical new approach – and even Acun Ilicali’s chequebook cannot provide that.

Tim Walter is blazing a trail for a “unique” style of football which should be thrilling, but not without its mishaps.

As he points out, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, and ask him what the Tigers need to be better at against that most quintessentially rugged of English football teams, Millwall, to East Yorkshire on Saturday and the list is a mile long.

He still needs players but at least things are improving on that front, with Charlie Hughes, Oscar Zambrano and Mason Burstow having had a week’s tutelage in Walterball. Chris Bedia arrived on Thursday – with Jean Michael Seri’s move to Saudi Arabia confirmed the next morning – and summer signing Cody Drameh is fit to make a belated debut.

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To look at the squad list on the back of the programme, things appear to be coming together for the German coach but it will take more than one transfer window to get to where he is heading.

“Every new signature is good for us, it’s a new step and especially the first period of the transfer window is maybe a foundation for the upcoming season,” says Walter.

“We have a lot of signings but we lost a lot of players who scored a lot of goals so we have to bring in new players with a new philosophy, you can’t do it in one period.

“CRAZY GAFFER”: Hull City coach Tim Walter

“If you want to be unique it takes time. We try to be unique but you have to behave like that.

“All I need from my players is the conviction and that’s what I have. They have the willingness to learn and to do it and to be unique.

“It takes time to build something new.”

Where Walter perhaps needs most time is on the training pitch, which is why a blank midweek was a blessing in a Championship which does not have many. September’s international break will be a Godsend.

Work at Cottingham is essential, which is why it was frustrating so few new signings were in place for pre-season, when the likes of Danny Rohl and Michael Carrick, to name but two, were drilling the bulk of their squads.

Not only do the new signings need to learn Walter’s idiosyncratic ideas, but each new face raises the intensity and quality of his sessions.

“It’s important you don’t know you’re going to play at the weekend so you have to fight to be in the squad and for your first XI appearance,” says Walter, whose fringe players getting knocked out of the League Cup at least gives him another free midweek before the trip to Leeds United. “That’s important to have.

“Only then can you be competitive in the whole league for the whole season. That’s a must.”

Ask Walter what work he wants to get on with, and the list is a long one.

“We can be better at everything!” he insists, and draws against Bristol City and Plymouth Argyle to start the campaign have not put up much of a counter-argument.

“Maybe have a better pass completion because we had only 80 per cent. We need to bring it up.

“We need to play our counter(-attacks) more straight, we need to play especially in the last third a bit quicker, to have more ball speed and that’s important. And at the end, to have a better finish.

“The opportunities were there but we have to take the moments because that’s important for the games.

“We didn’t make many mistakes, especially defensively – we defended really well – but in the end one mistake can be decisive.

“In the offence we have to take more risks, shoot more and at the end we have to score more.”

Bodies are one thing, minds are another. On that score, Walter seems more confident.

“We have the will to win and I try to bring my mentality and mix it with the English mentality we have here and the culture,” he says.

“I’m very demanding and they know me a bit better (now). It’s all about human relations and that’s what we’re working for, to get to know each other more and more.

“They know they have a crazy gaffer and I hope they know I love them all and I give everything for them, for the club and for football. I’m so passionate about football and that’s what I try to show all the time.”

That oh-so important four-letter word again. How much he gets from fans and a self-confessed impatient owner will probably come to define Hull’s great Walter experiment.