In an age when the propensity towards kneejerk reactions is matched only by a sense of schaden-freude, few chants are aired more lustily inside grounds than the one that heralds an impending managerial dismissal. For a little more than 20 minutes yesterday Hull City’s supporters were gleefully telling Mark Hughes that “you’re getting sacked in the morning”, but the Manchester City manager boarded the coach back from Humberside in the belief that a corner had at last been turned.

Again individual errors blighted Manchester City’s performance, as so often this season, but, as the dust settled on a topsy-turvy match, Hughes was understandably eager to accentuate the positives. His authority had been strengthened last week by a resounding vote of confidence from the club’s owner, Sheikh Mansour, but, midway through the first half here – with his side 1-0 down, having lost Joe Hart to injury, and with anxiety spreading through the team – Hughes would have been forgiven for thinking, like many Manchester City managers before him, that he was paying the price for sipping from a poisoned chalice.

The nature of the goals Manchester City conceded – the first scored by Daniel Cousin after a heinous back-pass by Tal Ben-Haim, the second a deflected free kick from Geovanni, with Stephen Ireland scoring twice for the visiting team in between – might add to Hughes’s well-honed sense of injustice, but, in the context of their recent problems, this was a step in the right direction, just as it was for a Hull side who were anxious to avoid a fourth consecutive defeat.

“We gifted them the opening goal and at that point you start to think, ‘Here we go again,’ ” Hughes said. “But overall we’re happy with our performance. The performances we’ve had away from home haven’t been anywhere near the level we need to get points in the Premier League, but that was much better. That should give us confidence for the games that we’ve got coming up.”

Those games – at home to Arsenal and Manchester United in the Barclays Premier League and away to Schalke in the Uefa Cup – are hardly fixtures that Hughes would have chosen for a team who seem to be suffering from growing pains, but at least a draw has given them breathing space in the congested bottom half of the table. The problem is that, in this curious campaign, losing to Arsenal and United may lead City to drop like a stone, generating the kind of crisis talk that would test the Sheikh’s claim to offer a welcome antidote to the trigger-happy culture of Thaksin Shinawatra, his predecessor, and, long before that, Peter Swales.

The biggest problem for Hughes is his team’s tendency to make basic errors. Richard Dunne, the captain, was absent after a red card and an erratic performance against Tottenham Hotspur a week earlier. Ben-Haim, his stand-in, produced a back-pass in the thirteenth minute that gave Daniel Cousin an unmissable opportunity to put Hull ahead. Injury was added to insult when Hart, the goalkeeper, limped off minutes later, having damaged ankle ligaments when he collided with Cousin.

Ben-Haim, Pablo Zabaleta and Vincent Kompany all incurred the wrath of their manager for misplacing routine passes. And these were the players Hughes trusted for a cold Sunday afternoon on Humberside; not so Elano and Jô, the Brazilians, whom he has fined for stepping out of line off the pitch in recent weeks and who can hardly be said to have performed to a samba beat on it.

Robinho has shown more stomach for the battle – and even wore the captain’s armband in Dunne’s absence – but even he has been out-shone at times this season by Ireland, who levelled the scores, gleefully tapping home after Kamil Zayatte did a passable impression of Ben-Haim. The midfield player then curled home a delicious second goal on the stroke of half-time to give City a 2-1 lead.

Hull, though, are not a team to succumb easily. They flew out of the blocks for the second half and it seemed inevitable that their equalising goal should come from Geovanni. Released by Manchester City in the summer, the Brazilian had a point to prove and prove it he did, albeit with the help of a deflection that took his free kick past Kasper Schmeichel. Honours even. While Sheikh Mansour may wonder where all of this is going, Hughes will hope that the Hull fans’ taunts prove not just premature but a long way wide of the mark.

Hull (4-3-1-2): B Myhill 5 P McShane 5 M Turner 6 K Zayatte 4 S Ricketts 6 D Marney 6 I Ashbee 6 G Boateng 6 Geovanni 8 M King 6 D Cousin 6 Substitutes: N Barmby (for Cousin, 77min), P Halmosi (for Boateng, 85). Not used: M Duke, N Doyle, R Garcia, S Giannakopoulos, C Folan. Next: Portsmouth (a)

Man City (4-3-2-1): J Hart 5 P Zabaleta 5 T Ben-Haim 3 M Richards 5 J Garrido 5 S Wright-Phillips 6 V Kompany 6 S Ireland 8 D Vassell 5 Robinho 7 Benjani Mwaruwari 4 Substitutes: K Schmeichel 5 (for Hart, 19min), Jô (for Benjani, 76). Not used: N Onuoha, M Ball, D Hamann, Elano, C Evans. Next: Arsenal (h)

Referee P Dowd Attendance 24,902

Capello watch

Micah Richards is suffering because of the collective anxiety in Manchester City’s defence. Shaun Wright-Phillips will hope to feature for England against Germany in Berlin, but Joe Hart is ruled out for a month with an ankle injury.