Cup could give Hull league boost

The weather´s not been great in Hull this week and it´s taken its toll on our training ground which is flooded. We´ve been using the facilities at a local college but it´s not really disrupted us too much; the mood in the camp is good and I think there was plenty in the performance against Arsenal to give us confidence for the games to come.

We were well in the game until the last eight minutes and thought we could get a point. Unfortunately we were on the end of a couple of dodgy decisions and I think that played a part in us losing the game. We were convinced we should have had a penalty when Johan Djourou tangled with Manucho in the box. We didn´t get it though and their third goal should have been ruled out for offside. It does seem a little as if we´re getting a raw deal with referees lately after the first goal against Everton which was also offside but hopefully they´ll balance out over the season.

As I said, there were positives to take from the Arsenal game. We knew they´d want to play their neat passing game so we tried as much as we could to keep them in front of the back four and limit the damage they could do. I think they knew after the game at the Emirates that it would be a bit of a battle and they tried using a more direct approach. There were plenty of times when they went to hit Adebayor early and build play from that. We frustrated them for most of the match and came back from a goal down to almost take a point.

Despite the decent performance against Arsenal we came away with nothing and we´re still in a tough position in the league. I´m sure the gaffer has games identified in which we have to pick up points but at the minute we´ve not talked about it as a team. At the start of the season we did an exercise where we gave our ideas on where we wanted to be points-wise and what points we could get from which games. The problem is, once you get results like beating Spurs at White Hart Lane and Arsenal at the Emirates but lose to Bolton and Sunderland at home that plan goes out of the window.

I mentioned Manucho earlier, he´s just arrived on loan from Manchester United. He was a bit of an unknown quantity to be honest but he came on against Arsenal and looked really good. We had Fraizer [Campbell] from United last year and he did a great job for us so hopefully Manucho can get among the goals too. You´ve got to be some player to be on the books at United so I´m sure there´s more to come from him.

It´s Millwall in the FA Cup tomorrow which should be an interesting game. They´re one of the local clubs from where I grew up in South London. They´ve got a good set of fans and for a Cup game against a Premier League team I´m sure there´ll be plenty of them coming up to the KC to cheer their side on. One boost for us is that Andy Dawson could be back. He´s a solid left-back and he played a massive part in our success at the start of the season before getting injured. He played a reserve game this week so hopefully he´ll be back in first team contention soon.

We played a slightly weakened team against Newcastle in the last round and got through. I´m not sure yet what side the gaffer´s got in mind for Millwall but I think another Cup win could give us a confidence boost for our league campaign.

I´ve just uploaded the rest of my http://www.michaelturnerofficialwebsite.com/AboutMe/autobiography/ [autobiography] so take a look if you want to find out about my time at Inter Milan.

Cheers, Michael