Hull City sickness bug leaves Sergej Jakirovic frustrated after Blackburn Rovers defeat

Hull City sickness bug leaves Sergej Jakirovic frustrated after Blackburn Rovers defeat

Hull City's unbeaten start to the Championship season is over

Sergej Jakirovic watched his Hull City side beaten convincingly at home by Blackburn Rovers (Image: George Wood/Getty Images)

Sergej Jakirovic made no excuses for Hull City's 3-0 home defeat to Blackburn Rovers, admitting two goals immediately after half-time killed his side. But the Tigers boss admitted a sickness bug that ripped through the camp didn't help.

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Below-par City trailed to an 18th-minute Ryan Hedges goal but conceded twice at the start of the second half, effectively killing the game off.

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City's squad was hit with a bout of illness in the camp in the days before the game, and though Jakirovic was keen to not use that as a reason for a tepid display, he says it was a factor in the lack of energy from his side.

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The Tigers lost influential defender Charlie Hughes because of it, while summer signing Akin Famewo was also hit by the sickness virus, and other players in the starting XI were under the weather, which saw 18-year-old Cathal McCarthy come in for his senior debut.

"It's not a reality check," Jakirovic told Hull Live. "When we are at full strength with the players that we have, then it will be a much different story.

"I believe in that because we had before this game - it's not an alibi at all - we had a lot of problems with the virus. Unfortunately, we missed some players, but from the beginning of this game, I didn't feel good energy, good intensity, but Blackburn were better.

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"At 0-0, maybe we had three good chances before we conceded the goal, but when we conceded the goal, it was very difficult for us.

"We were not good on the ball, we were not good without the ball first or second challenge, too far away from everything, so I can just congratulate Blackburn for deserving their victory.

"Some of them (the players playing) had diarrhoea and vomiting in the last three days so they didn't train."

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"We are short in some positions, " he continued. "For example, in the middle, we didn't have so many options. We tried to put Kyle in, put Kasey out, David Akintola on the left side, and Mo Belloumi, who hasn't played for nine-and-a-half months.

"We were bad today, and this is all that is important. I said before, I just pray that we are healthy. This is very, very important for us because if we miss one, two or three players, then we will have problems because it's not easy to replace some players.

"You could see in the build-up that we have problems that we are not so self-confident on the ball, and we lost so many 50/50 challenges. This cannot happen in the Championship because they will punish you immediately, and they punished us immediately.

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"They tried to press us, but you can find a better solution with the ball. You cannot play with fear. I hate this because this is still football. I've said before, you must play without fear, you must fight. This is what you can do: run. We were without sprinting today, in transition, we didn't sprint one hundred per cent, and maybe this is the key to this virus three days ago.

"When we play at home, we need to be compact. It was not compact today. We were not compact. It's very hard because the start of the second half killed us.

"I think in the end, they deserved to win for sure during the whole game, but we gave them three cheap goals again."

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Jakirovic was also unhappy with the award of the second goal, when Ohashi touched in Hedges' cross, with replays suggesting he was offside. Jakirovic was in conversation with the referee at full-time, but he says it was to clarify the second.

"The second goal for me, I just asked who scored the goal," he said. "I think the Japanese striker was offside. He was offside, but the linesman didn't see that he touched the ball."

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