Hull City’s full focus is on facing Southampton in the Championship play-off final at Wembley on Saturday afternoon, assistant manager Dean Holden has said.
Holden joined Mark Chapman on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Monday Night Club amid continued uncertainty over the fixture as we await the verdict of the English Football League’s independent disciplinary commission’s investigation into allegations Southampton spied on Middlesbrough’s training session ahead of the first leg of their semi-final earlier this month.
Holden said: “We’re preparing fully to play Southampton on Saturday at 16:30 BST – that’s what we’ve been told by the EFL. If anything changes in the next couple days then we’ll have to adapt to that.”
Holden accepted the gruelling Championship season, which features 46 games and regular intervals of three-days between games, means they can adapt if necessary.
“The key thing for us as staff is make sure to be as concise as possible,” he said. “There’s obviously going to be a lot of emotion, a lot of nervous energy, going into such a big occasion and for us it’s about the players going out there and not overthinking.
“We’ve adapted well to teams that we’re playing against, to suffering a lot of injuries and we’ve found ways to win.
“We can’t afford to take our eyes off it and start trying to overcomplicate this situation.”
He added: “It’s such a unique situation. We’ve had two great results against Southampton. We’ve got a dossier on every team we’ve played against, we watched both semi-finals in detail. We’ve got a good understanding on all the teams.
“The full focus is and will remain on Southampton. If we’re asking our analyst team, which is quite small, to prepare for two games we’re asking for problems.”
Holden said there was a ‘great atmosphere’ in training and: “There doesn’t seem any anxiety at the moment. We can’t get away from the noise, it’s everywhere you turn, but the gaffer’s [Sergej Jakirovic] been great with his messaging.
“We’ve trained as normal on Monday. It won’t affect our training until we get a result [from the commission].”