Everton 1 Hull City 1: Steve Bruce stands by his decision to drop captain Curtis Davies

A refashioned side halted Hull’s run of four straight defeats

Having seen Hull slump into the relegation zone, Steve Bruce knew it was time to take radical action, dropping his captain, Curtis Davies and recalling some of the players who had been part of their promotion season.

A refashioned side halted Hull’s run of four straight defeats with a hard-fought 1-1 draw at Everton. Both Bruce and his Everton counterpart, Roberto Martinez, admitted the longer the game wore on the more likely Hull appeared to be to win it.

“I have been making big decisions for the last 15 years,” said Bruce. “Curtis has had it tough lately and the harder he seemed to be trying the more mistakes he appeared to be making. I just thought he needed time out so he could see the wood for the trees.

“I did bring the likes of David Meyler and Stephen Quinn back, footballers who have been with me from the start and who I’ve known for the last two-and-a-half years. They have a refreshing honesty about them and I thought that is what we needed.

“The second season in the Premier League is always harder than the first. There was no pressure last season, nobody gave us a cat in hell’s chance of staying up.

“This season nobody really expected us to be in the relegation zone but we have conceded five times in the last 10 minutes and had a player sent off three times with 40 minutes or more remaining - and that has taken its toll.

“The Premier League is taking a familiar shape. The bottom eight or nine clubs are the ones you would expect to be in the bottom eight or nine and our job at Hull is to be near the top of that group.”