Ruben Selles is a man in a hurry.
His days begin at 6am and end late, the drive to and from his temporary digs to Hull City’s Cottingham training ground cloaked in darkness.
Early mornings are “analysis, analysis, analysis” before he and his backroom staff get to the real business of delivering punchy training sessions with the goal of getting them to buy into his aggressive, quick and front-foot attacking philosophy.
With Hull sitting bottom of the Championship, there is a thudding sense of urgency about his work.
Despite a defeat to Coventry City that laid bare the size of the challenge facing him since leaving Reading, he is enthused by what lies ahead.
“This group of players has given me everything from day one,” he tells The i Paper.
“Even with the Coventry game, they still fought. 90 per cent of my experiences since joining have been positive.”
One look at his CV suggests Selles deserves this opportunity.
He has taken the road less travelled to managing in the Championship, starting as an Under-11s coach in Valencia who used to sneak into Rafa Benitez’s training sessions and take copious notes.
From there he travelled to Russia, Azerbaijan, Greece and Denmark, even working as an assistant fitness coach, before being headhunted by Southampton’s data gurus to join Ralph Hassenhuttl’s backroom staff after being identified as one of Europe’s most promising young coaches.
After a brief stint as interim manager at St Mary’s, promoted after the divisive Nathan Jones departed, he moved to Reading, keeping the team in League One despite a points deduction and leading them into promotion contention this season despite ongoing, damaging off-field issues.
A case in point: in Berkshire he, along with club executives, forfeited wages for fortnight in solidarity with non-playing staff who had not been paid.
“I’m here because of that experience,” he says.
“I learned a lot, it made me a better coach and person. Those experiences were very painful in the moment but you learn to cope with different levels of stress and how to get the very best not only from yourself but also the very best from everyone.
“It was a difficult decision, emotionally, to leave. I was there one and a half years but it feels like five years because of the experiences we had together.
“We were arriving at the point where they had a team they could recognise and everything was going in the direction where we keep the club stable but I also felt it was the peak of the things we could achieve with the club because of the situation not related to football.”
Headhunted by Hull earlier this month, there is no escaping the fact he has taken over a side who are in a mess.
Botched summer recruitment overseen by Tim Walter – whose brand of “heart attack” football has left the Tigers flatlining in the Championship’s relegation zone – has also raised questions about the vision of Turkish owner Acun Ilicali, who has got through four managers in a little over two years.
In first meetings Selles says the pair “spoke the same language”.
He dismisses concerns about the club’s managerial turnover, suggesting “a year in the job is about the average in the Championship”.
“We got on well, we sat and talked and agreed on lots of things,” he says.
“I have a really positive feeling about the relationship moving forward and for the future of Hull we are aligned, we want to create something powerful.
“If we can build the proper foundation, build a good platform, then the ambitions for the club are there. But now it’s a bit beside the point to talk about anything that isn’t just avoiding relegation. Everything is focused on getting out of the relegation zone.”
It has barely been a fortnight but Selles’ diagnosis of the Hull squad is not that it lacks quality or ability.
Instead he senses a hesitancy that is unhealthy, which is why he has been hammering home to his new players – in a twist on the famous Al Pacino pre-game team talk in American football film Any Given Sunday – that they have to start “fighting for the inches”.
“What we need to be conscious of is that things aren’t just going to happen,” he says.
“We need to make them happen. We need to compete for the moments because the moments aren’t just going to be there and we are just going to be able to score. We need to compete for every inch and compete in every situation we’re in.
“We need to create a habit of competitiveness and then through that the results will arrive. It can’t be ‘let’s see what happens’, we need to make things happen. In the position we’re in, nobody is going to give us anything.”
It is a message that he believes everyone connected to the club needs to heed. He includes club staff and the supporters in his rallying cry.
“From the fans’ perspective needing to just give that extra ten minutes of being extra loud or whatever it is in the game, from the club giving that extra support to the players, from us giving that extra quality that the situation demands.
“We need to go for higher standards, that counts for everyone.”
When Hull did their due diligence on Selles, what came back was a coach whose sharp, engaging work on the training ground has energised his players.
But they are also getting a manager who is screeching an 180 degree turn from what Walter turned out to be: obsessed with build up with little end product.
“We want to have a team that want to be very vertical, very aggressive and attacking,” Selles says of his philosophy.
“The word is vertical. We want to have this breaking lines mentality where we can put our opponent on the back foot and we can arrive into the final third organised but as quick a possible. Then we want to be very aggressive defensively.
“The Watford game was a little bit of an example of what we want. We just need to improve on those moments but we should be a team that are very difficult to play against but can create chances in a relatively quick way.
“We need to transform the quality [we have] into competitiveness, that is the key.”
Hull intend to add to that “quality” in January and Selles reveals that meetings with sporting director Jared Dublin and the club’s recruitment team have already taken place.
But he plays down talk of an overhaul similar to 12 months ago, when the Tigers rolled the promotion dice by recruiting, among others, Fabio Carvalho on loan from Liverpool in an attempt to secure a top six finish.
“Obviously we have the opportunity to strengthen the team in January if we think we can strengthen it but when we talk about what we have in the team, our attitude is that the players we have are the best players in the world,” he says.
“Our focus is that we’re in contact with Jared and the recruitment department to try and strengthen the team and see what key positions we have.
“But in our experience those players need to be a very, very specific profile.
“We can’t start taking a few players or making a few changes because realistically I think we have enough here.
“It should be two or three who really help us to make an impact in the team.”
Their daunting festive programme kicks off against Swansea City on Saturday before they play three of the teams in the top six over Christmas.
It is a baptism of fire for Selles but he is undaunted.
“We just need one good performance, three points and then comes the relief,” he says.
“But we need to work hard for it, things don’t just happen.”
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