Hull City boss Sergej Jakirovic gracefully admitted Blackburn Rovers were well worthy of their 3-0 victory on Saturday.
Valerien Ismael's side secured their first Championship win of the campaign with goals from Ryan Hedges, Yuki Ohashi and Todd Cantwell earning the three points.
Hull were depleted by a sickness bug that had swept through their squad during the week. Jakirovic felt that was a factor in the match but didn't take anything away from Rovers.
"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.
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"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.
"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.
"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.
"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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