The City boss was brutally honest after Saturday's desperately poor showing in the capital

Hull City head coach Sergej Jakirovic says picking his starting line-up to face Brentford in the Premier League on Sunday will be a much easier task than he's had so far this season.

So poor were his City side at Fulham, Jakirovic believes, that few of his players could have any complaints about finding themselves out of the team against Keith Andrews' Bees.

While Lucas Herrington came in for the injured Nobel Mendy, Brooke Norton-Cuffy and Mo Belloumi were brought into the starting XI at the expense of Ryan Giles and Joe Gelhardt.

Jakirovic made five changes from half-time onwards at Craven Cottage in a bid to try and kickstart his sluggish side into life, but that didn't work.

The Tigers were due to play a behind-closed-doors game against Championship side Lincoln City on Tuesday, with Jakirovic hoping to use that as a chance to try and get players like Morita, Gelhardt, and Tim Iroegbunam up to speed ahead of the weekend, but it was cancelled at the Imps' request.

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Mohamed-Ali Cho and Lucas Gourna-Douath could also return to the squad this weekend after missing the last two matches through injury, while there is faint hope that Mendy could recover in time. It's understood that the injury sustained by Robinio Vaz in the dying embers of the defeat at Fulham is not thought to be as serious as initially expected.

"It will be easy because we will try again to pick a good 11 players, but it's not just about who is starting the game; it's also about the contribution of substitutions," the Croatian told Hull Live.

"I could not analyse anything. We were very, very poor. I can say that the whole team played a bad game, so there is not one player who was in the mood to create something.

"We collapsed together, it's also my responsibility, but I'm always trying to put out (team) the best of what we have in this moment. We made substitutions, but you can see they are a little bit rusty because it's about match fitness. I hope we will so a reaction because we must do."

City's players have received plenty of glowing praise for their efforts in the past year, but Jakirovic says his charges must front up, accept the criticism and respond against Brentford.

"One hundred per cent (they must face up to the reality of how poor they were) because they showed already even in the previous season that we must fight because without this, you don't have a chance, especially on this level. You don't have a chance.

"They won the first ball, the second ball. They were everywhere. They ran maybe more than us. I saw that we had 140 passes, which is for this level it's not so good, and they had I think 700 passes, which is excellent. This is one of the reasons why we looked like this."