Hull City are sitting pretty fifth in the Championship and on course for the play-offs
Sergej Jakirovic has masterminded a fine season for Hull City(Image: Phil Oldham/Shutterstock)
Dean Holden has praised Sergej Jakirovic for the way he has handled the ‘brutal’ fixture schedule and not used injuries to key Hull City players as an excuse.
Tuesday night’s win over Wrexham ensured the Tigers remained safely inside the play-off places, with a nine-point buffer and a return to winning ways.
Goals from Joe Gelhardt and Lewis Koumas helped City to the victory, and with nine games remaining, they are locked on to make the top six.
That comes after they ended a two-game losing run and now face relegation-threatened West Brom and Sheffield Wednesday before the international break.
Assistant manager Holden has been impressed with the way Jakirovic has negotiated the demands and twists and turns in his first season in the Championship.
“We’ve suffered all season through a lot of injuries. I know clubs go through that, but we’ve really had big injuries to key players,” he told talkSPORT.
“Ryan Giles at the moment he’s out and we’ve had to find a way to make it work and working under Sergej, he’s brilliant to work with because he just finds a way with the players that are available, no excuses.
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“It’s black and white, a little bit old school like it used to be, and there’s nothing wrong with that, he finds a way to win games. It’s not a set system or set style of play for one game, it’s a bit horses for courses.”
One of the key issues, compared to Turkey, where Holden and Jakirovic both worked prior to coming to the MKM Stadium, has been the relentless nature of the competition.
“I think Sergej himself found that a little bit when he first came in, until you walk in the shoes, you can do all the research you want, but when you’ve been there and done it, I think that’s probably one of the reasons the club wanted me in there. It’s all the first part of the season.
“You’ve got three international breaks, we have a decent amount of time off where everybody’s able to take their eye away from football and spend time with their families and come back re-energised. It’s worked really well for us.
“The November to March period with no international break is the tough one. The Christmas period, all the games, and we’re just coming to the end of that now.
“Managing the bumps in the road, that’s what Sergej’s been fantastic at, managing a defeat, we’ve only gone, I think, all season, only a couple of defeats, we’ve never gone three, four, five, six without a win. We’ve been able to emotionally get over a defeat, focus on the next one.
“Don’t go after the game and start battering the players and start saying things that you regret the next day and losing confidence, it’s not brushing it under the carpet. We deal with it, but we deal with it man to man. We’ve got a good dressing room, I have to say.
“We’re right in the mix with nine games to go. It was a tough game, people say, ex-Premier League side Hull City against ex-National League Wrexham, that’s forgetting what’s happened in recent times, and they’ve obviously spent a lot of money, Wrexham.
“I think it’s a brilliant story, but it was a tough game. They’ve built really well for this Championship season; they’ve got good options, and they put you under a lot of pressure. We managed to see it out, and we’re comfortably sat in the play-offs, and we’re obviously really happy to be there.”
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