Hull City will return to the Championship this season after just one year away from the second tier of English football - and Grant McCann gained sweet redemption after he led the Tigers into League One a year ago.

It wasn’t all McCann’s fault - he was inconvenienced by the sales of Jarrod Bowen and Kamil Grosicki mid-season but results downturned and the Northern Irishman had no answer for it.

But despite the drop into League One, McCann was able to guide Hull back to the Championship at the first time of asking which will have been a great relief to fans.

Hull have hopped between divisions in the 21st century, reaching the very top at the Premier League but they were also in the lower reaches in League Two - although not since 2004.

In that time period there have been many prolific players that the Tigers have come up against - some more prolific than others.

Let’s look at 10 players who always seemed to get the better of Hull on their day in years gone by.

Phillips played for so many clubs in his career but because he played a lot of his football in the Premier League he didn’t actually come up against the Tigers that much.

The sharp shooter did play against Hull for three different clubs though - West Brom, Blackpool and Crystal Palace - and like always he knew where the back of the net was.

His record against Hull stands at five goals in eight games - and his final match against the Tigers in 2013 saw him score a hat-trick for Crystal Palace in a 4-2 victory at Selhurst Park, proving he still had the midas touch at the age of 39.

Another striker that is playing well into his 30’s as he's still at Scottish Premiership champions Rangers, Defoe was a real nemesis of Hull during their Premier League days for two different clubs

Defoe scored a hat-trick for Tottenham Hotspur in 2009 at the KCOM Stadium in a 5-1 win for Spurs, but he didn’t score again until 2016, where he netted for Sunderland in both the home and away fixtures against the Tigers.

It’s not just Hull who will have suffered this fate though - Defoe has punished many top flight defences in his career and Hull are just one of many teams.

Another striker who has played for many clubs during his career, albeit in the Championship, Stern John seemed to pop up at most clubs and be Hull’s scourge when they were a regular Championship side.

Between 2005 and 2008, John played for four different second tier clubs - Derby, Coventry, Sunderland and Southampton - and the for Trinidad & Tobago international netted against Hull for three of them.

John’s overall record stood at five goals in six games against Hull, and that included a hat-trick in 2007 for Southampton in a 4-0 victory - the two then went their separate ways as the Tigers reached the Premier League and John remained in the Championship and then moved abroad.

This would be a real unexpected one as out of everyone on this gallery, Sinclair is probably the one whose career really fizzled out.

But he was still a nightmare that Hull couldn’t seem to figure out as he netted twice against the Tigers in the EFL Cup in 2011 for Macclesfield.

With those strikes and his other goals early on that season seeing Peterborough snap him up, Sinclair didn’t score in his two Championship games against the Tigers in the 2011-12 season, but early on in the next campaign he netted a hat-trick at the KCOM Stadium in a 3-1 victory over Hull.

It didn’t work out for Sinclair as he ended up down the leagues and eventually in non-league - not like the next player on this list though.

Harry Kane will probably be on the lists of many clubs if we were looking at who has scored the most against them in years gone by, and Hull are no different.

It isn’t just for Spurs that Kane was netting for against the Tigers, with a loan spell at Millwall in 2012 seeing Kane bag in a 2-0 victory.

Back at Spurs though Kane did score five more times in six outings - that included a hat-trick on the final day of the 2016-17 campaign which was a 7-1 drubbing of the Tigers at their home stadium as they headed back to the Championship.

Dowell hasn’t bagged in all five games that he’s played against Hull - just two of them in fact - however he’s netted two hat-tricks against the Tigers for two different clubs which is quite unique.

The first one came in 2017 when he was on loan at Nottingham Forest, scoring all three for the Tricky Trees in a 3-2 victory at the KCOM.

Then in 2020 when at Wigan Athletic he was at the treble yet again when the Latics recorded a famous 8-0 success at the DW Stadium - Hull will be glad that they don’t have to face him next season as Norwich are now in the Premier League.

Another player with more goals scored against Hull than he’s played matches against them, Benrahma was a class above for Brentford and like Dowell he has scored two hat-tricks against them.

They were both for the same club however, the first coming in a 5-1 win over the Tigers at Griffin Park, with the Algerian also adding an assist to his stats that afternoon.

Then a year later, the winger was at it again in yet another 5-1 win - this time at the KCOM - they were probably glad to see the back of him when he departed for West Ham last summer but by that point the Tigers were in League One.

Rooney was an absolute nemesis of Hull when he was at Manchester United - but which defences didn’t he terrorise at his peak?

In 10 league games against the Tigers for the Red Devils, Rooney scored seven times and assisted a further five goals.

Four of the strikes came in one game as Rooney did a clean sweep in a 4-0 victory at Old Trafford in 2010, and in his next two league games against them years later he was on target again.

Rooney did play once for Derby against Hull in 2020, but he failed to get on the scoresheet which was probably a big shock to Hull fans.

When you think of veteran Football League strikers who always seemed to know where the back of the net was, Iwelumo was one of them.

The Scotland international played for four different clubs in the Championship against Hull, and with all of them he netted against the Tigers.

In eight matches Iwelumo scored eight goals, his best match coming in a 5-1 victory against them for Colchester United in 2006, where he scored four goals and assisted the other for another free-scoring striker in Jamie Cureton.

Iwelumo went on to score goals for Charlton, Burnley and Watford against Hull and they were probably delighted when he dropped down the leagues towards the end of his career.

The only other player in recent times to score eight goals against Hull is Alexis Sanchez, who really was their nemesis in the 2014-15 campaign and also the 2016-17 season.

Arsenal and Hull played three games in 2014-15, including in the FA Cup and Sanchez scored in all of them, netting four times.

And in the 2016-17 campaign the Chilean netted braces in both league games, with Hull’s defenders clearly not able to handle how good he was at the peak of his powers for the Gunners.

Hull haven’t had to play against Sanchez since 2017, and it’s doubtful they’ll come against him again and they’ll be absolutely delighted at that.