Hull City marked the start of a new era by beating Bristol City 2-0 at the KC Stadium. Tigers boss Nigel Pearson paid tribute to Jay Simpson, who scored his first goals for the club since his summer switch to the KC Stadium and the former Leicester boss outlined his plans to strengthen his squad in January.

He said: "We played well and there is no question we deserved to win the game.

"It's been a great week for the club in terms of the takeover, but it's been a frustrating week for us because of injuries.

"I'm delighted for Jay (Simpson) because he's a young man who has had a difficult start to his career here. It was important he came to the party today because our choices were limited up front.

"It's been a difficult first half of the season. We don't score enough goals and we will look to strengthen in that area.

"We're in a period of transition, but hopefully we can build on things. The takeover has been more complicated and gone on a bit longer than was expected, but it was important to get it right.

"As a club we had got ourselves into a bit of a mess, but it is good to have our future sorted out in terms of managing our debt.

"We spent two years in the Premier League and have ended up with huge wages and the next 18 months of our parachute payments accounted for. It has needed a takeover with real clout to sort things out.

"We won't be spending bucketloads of money, but we will be improving the squad. We do have targets we're looking at and if we can do the deals, we will."

Bristol City counterpart Keith Millen admitted his side never got going.

"We have been on a good run, and I think the most disappointing thing about the game today was that we didn't perform as we have been doing," Millen said.

"We have probably forgotten what it is like to play away from home because we have had three home games in a row and it seems like a long time since we've been away.

"When you are away from home, you need to have a different mentality. We spent too much of the game in the comfort zone and were not aggressive enough in our play.

"I don't think there was much between the two teams in the game. I thought we had the better chances in the opening 10 minutes or so and their crowd went a bit quiet.

"But their first goal was scored too easily following a throw-in, and the goal in the second half was scored on the counter-attack, so both were disappointing from our point of view.

"We didn't really see any response from the lads until after the second goal, which was too late. In games you can't wait until you are one or two goals down before starting to play."