Liam Rosenior felt his injury-hit Hull side produced their “most important performance of the season” as they claimed a 1-0 Sky Bet Championship win over Sunderland.
Hull were without nine senior players as they travelled to Wearside, but Fabio Carvalho’s second-half strike proved sufficient to secure them a hard-fought success at the Stadium of Light.
The victory lifted the Tigers into the play-off positions and helped convince Rosenior that his side was capable of mounting a sustained promotion push in the remainder of the campaign.
The Hull boss said: “I think it’s the most important performance of the season.
“I wanted to see what we were made of. Coming to an amazing stadium like this, playing in front of nearly 40,000 people, when it feels as though everything is going against you.
“We’ve had some terrible luck with injuries, I think we’ve been on the wrong side of some questionable decisions at time and been on the wrong side of results when we deserved to win.
“It’s easy for a group to lose faith and lose belief in what we’re doing, but they showed they still believe, they showed they’ve got faith in each other and they showed they’re willing to work for each other.
“I thought every single player was brilliant in terms of their engagement to the game.”
Rosenior reserved special praise for Liverpool loanee Carvalho, who swivelled to volley home his side’s winner with 19 minutes remaining.
He said: “The technique for that strike was top. In this league, if you have players who can take advantage at key moments, then you’ve always got a chance.
“It’s fine margins in this league. We played Sunderland at home and Jack Clarke popped up with a magical goal. Tonight, we played Sunderland away from home and it was Fabio who popped up with the magical goal.”
Sunderland’s defeat means they have lost three games in a row in all competitions and manager Michael Beale had to listen to his own fans chanting “you’re getting sacked in the morning” in the wake of Carvalho’s winner.
Beale said: “I’d ask the fans to get behind the players – I get the frustration.
“They can see the effort on the park from the players and any help they can give them, they have to understand the strength of that.
“When you’re at home and at a club like this, you expect to win and we’re the same, we’re bitterly disappointed.
“I’m only a month into the job. It shows the expectation on managers now.
“I think the fans have to get behind the players on the park because they’re a young group and I don’t think they realise the strength of their support to that young group in there.
“I’ll take what comes my way, I’ll take the responsibility of managing this club. It is what it is, if you win games people are happy and if you don’t, they’re not.”
