Published: 02:00 BST, 18 August 2026 | Updated: 05:29 BST, 18 August 2026<\/p>\n
The Hull City owner Acun Ilicali is tackling the question \u2018Will you be tempted to sack your manager if you are bottom of the Premier League at Christmas?\u2019 when Sergej Jakirovic walks through the room at the club\u2019s training ground where our interview is taking place.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Given that everyone seems to be predicting the club to go straight back down to the Championship, this feels rather awkward.<\/p>\n
Ilicali does not generally flinch, however, and as Jakirovic disappears into a side room, from where you suspect our conversation will remain entirely audible, he proceeds to explain why he and his manager are \u2018completely matching\u2019 in a way that he and Liam Rosenior, whom he dismissed two summers ago, were not.<\/p>\n
So, does he think the Bosnian will be here this time next year? \u2018Yes, yes, yes,\u2019 Ilicali insists. \u2018Some things happen unexpectedly in life. It\u2019s like that in marriage. Are you always together until death? No. But if there are some failures, it will not be Sergej\u2019s fault. Maybe the players will be young, inexperienced, new to the Premier League.\u00a0<\/p>\n
'Of course, I will stand by him if he loses games. I will not be judging him by the position in the table. It will be what can we do more to make him successful.\u2019<\/p>\n
History tells us that it can be hard to sustain that magnanimity in the white heat of the Premier League, where battle will be rejoined this weekend as Hull entertain Manchester United.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hull City owner Acun Ilicali is on typically honest and engaging form when he meets Daily Mail Sport on the eve of the new Premier League season<\/p>\n
Ilicali is under no illusions about the scale of the task in front of him. 'The next five years of the club\u2019s history will be decided in the next two months,\u2019 he admits<\/p>\n
Ilicali recounts some very good reasons for belief in the 49-year-old Jakirovic, who took the club from the jaws of Championship relegation to the top flight, but the size of the challenge up ahead looks formidable. Ilicali has established a transfer budget, including transfer fees and wages, of \u00a3200million, in a break-neck process of squad-building which, he says, will see 15 new players through the door and be era-defining.<\/p>\n
\u2018The next five years of the club\u2019s history will be decided in the next two months,\u2019 he relates. \u2018And what we are trying to do is complicated. If you fail, you will be relegated. If you are not careful, you will have players you are then not able to sell. And at worst, this situation can be a disaster for a club.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
In an ideal world, Hull would be able to lure back Liam Delap, the loanee who did so much for the club two years back, but the wages\u00a0Chelsea would want for sending him back to Humberside would, Ilicali reveals, be double the club\u2019s average. \u2018We love him and I hope he loves us but for this season, I didn\u2019t even ask Chelsea.\u2019<\/p>\n
With typical candour, Ilicali declares that good players with Premier League pedigree \u2013 often cited as a necessity for the newly-promoted \u2013 will simply not be keen enough to justify him spending all summer chasing after them.<\/p>\n
\u2018These boys don\u2019t come easily,\u2019 he says. 'A good, experienced, successful player in the Premier League will have four or five options. Why should he choose a team that everybody thinks will be relegated?\u00a0<\/p>\n
'It is easy to say, \u201cGet the Premier League boys and be safe\u201d but most of the boys you can bring from the Premier League will not be wanted by their club, so you will not be able to take the shiny ones. Manchester United or City will take those shiny ones, but they will not come to us.\u2019<\/p>\n