The Tigers claimed a deserved victory over last season’s relegated Premier League outfit
Hull City will assess the injury picked up by Mohamed Belloumi in the first half of their convincing 3-1 win over Southampton on Saturday afternoon.
Belloumi was starting his first game in almost a year having recovered from knee surgery but succumbed to a hamstring problem before the break, and despite trying to run it off, was replaced by home debutant Darko Gyabi after a spell of treatment.
Boss Sergej Jakirovic admitted it was not a surprise to see the Algerian suffer such an injury after coming back from his ruptured ACL, and says he will go for a scan in the next 24 hours to ascertain the severity.
His depature was the major disappoinment on an otherwise enjoyable day for the Croatian head coach, who watched his side put Southampton to the sword with goals from Kyle Joseph, John Lundstram and Oli McBurnie, before Adam Armstrong grabbed a consolation in the 95th minute to denyb City a clean sheet.
“What I know now is it’s a hamstring,” Jakirovic told Hull Live. “I don’t know how many days we will see. We will check and we will see.
“For me, this is an expected injury, especially 11 months without football with an ACL, so we will see how much damage there is.”
On the result, which is the Tigers’ second home win of the season, Jakirovic was delighted with how his team went about dealing with a side who like to dominate possession.
“Yes, I’m very happy because of them because they showed great energy, big intensity, challenges, duels, whatever, because we knew that Southampton would have the ball,” he explained.
“They are very good in this part, this moment of the play, and the idea was that when we are defending in the low block, middle block, that we are always compact.
“We struggled, we had problems, especially after going 1-0 up in the middle zone, a lot of balls through our midfield, and we didn’t close the passing lines. At half-time, we agreed that we would be more compact, narrower, so that we would not drop so much.
“In the first seven or eight minutes of the second half, we dropped too much, and then when you take the ball, you don’t have solutions, you don’t have counter-attack, you don’t have anything, you lose the ball very, very quickly.
“We changed that with two double sixes with 6 Amir and Lunny, later with Slater and Darko in front of them.
“Then after the second goal we tried to play more on the ball, with more self-confidence, but I expected this game, and what is most important in the plan of this game was when we are on the sides, especially when we have a calm possession that we are trying to make crosses with Kyle and Oli on the inside to put pressure on them, and I think two goals we scored were like this.”
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