Hull City manager Grant McCann says his players are only doing “okay” so far this campaign as he admitted there is “a lot of work to do” in the second half of the season.
The Tigers, who are 14th in the league, have stuttered recently in the league having lost to bottom side Barnsley and picking up just two wins in their last seven matches.
They are five points off sixth-placed Fulham as they continue to be a part of a congested race for the play-offs but as the season nears its midway point, McCann has urged his players to improve if they want a chance at promotion back to the Premier League.
Speaking to Hull Live, McCann said: “What I’ve said to the boys is that we’ve taken 30 points from 22 games. If we can win on Saturday, and hopefully we can, it’ll be 33 points from 23 games.
”That’s not good enough, it’s as simple as that. If we do that again in the next 23 then we’ll be 12th or 13th in the league. I explained that to the players.
“Don’t think that we’re doing well because we’re not. We are actually just doing okay. If you accept that then that’s what’ll happen to us in the second half of the season. We’ve got a lot of work to do.
”We’re not far off but that doesn’t matter. If you finish seventh and you’re outside the play-offs then you haven’t done it. That’s the way I look at things and the players are well aware of that.
“What we’ve done in the first half of the season ain’t going to be good enough in the second half of the season.
“I think we’ve turned a corner from the first 12 games when we took 14 points. When you think back to some of the results we dropped, we’ve got better after that over the next 10 or 11.
“We need to improve again in the second half of the season but first finish the first half of the season off well.”
Hull face Pep Clotet’s Birmingham side at the KCOM Stadium on Saturday at 3pm.
