City have suffered heavy defeats to Blackburn Rovers and Bristol City in their last two outings
Sergej Jakirovic is demanding his Hull City players be braver and much more focused when they face Swansea City on Saturday.
City have been well beaten in their last two outings, conceding seven goals along the way. At Bristol City, despite taking an early lead through Joe Gelhardt, a shambolic defensive display saw the hosts fashion 29 attempts at their goal, whilst hitting the woodwork on three occasions, scoring four times.
In fact, since the opening day clean sheet at Coventry City, the Tigers have shipped 13 goals in the four games in league and cup, something the head coach is determined to change.
“We always analyse everything. I analyse myself as well, but sometimes we didn’t have the right solutions, maybe in some positions. Now it’s a completely different story,” the Croatian told Hull Live on the eve of the trek to South Wales.
“Now with Amir (Hadziahmetovic), Darko (Gyabi), we have more options. We have Lewie Coyle back; he trained with us all week. We’re waiting on Semi Ajayi and Crooksy. Mo (Belloumi) is in full training, (Liam) Millar is in full training, and now there is much more quality in those positions, and I’m happy about it.
“Yes, of course (down to us to get results after the window closing). We need to change this; two defeats in a row for sure. We play against Swansea now. It’s a very demanding match for us. They’re a very good team, good on the ball in possession with a lot of automation in their play.
“We have to be a lot more concentrated, much more focused, much better defending, especially in the boxes and control their players better. We have spoken a lot about these things. We need to improve a lot of things from the last two games, especially Blackburn and Bristol.
“If you are not tough in the challenges, if you are afraid to go into the challenges, or you don’t have the will to go into the challenges, then you will have a problem against a League Two team, not just in the Championship.
“This is the key, but this is the key in every game, not just against Swansea. We need to be more compact and better in defence. We must be braver in the challenges, more brave on the ball as well, because in Bristol, when I watched the game back, I turned off my laptop after 30 minutes because it was unbelievable. I think we didn’t have more than two or three successful passes, but this is unbelievable, so it was very, very poor, very poor.”
Since the defeat in the pouring Ashton Gate rain, the transfer window has closed and Jakirovic has given those players not away on international duty a few days off after a busy period from the start of pre-season.
He says his players are well rested after a period of time off in the first week of the international break, but since Monday, have been working hard to ensure they can end a run of straight defeats.
“Yes, we rested,” he continued. “We rested good, we recovered good and everything was OK. We gave the players a couple of days off because we had six players away with their national teams, we had some injuries and players recovering from injury, but we were back in full training on Monday.
“We had good sessions, and we prepared something for Swansea, especially because we now have two defeats in a row, which I’m not used to, but this is a completely different league, so I think that we will be well prepared for this week.”
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