With Craig Cathcart, William Troost-Ekong, Kortney Hause and Jeremy Ngakia all watching last night’s game from the stands, the last thing head coach Slaven Bilic needed was to see both Francisco Sierralta and Mario Gaspar limp off as well.

“Apparently both of them are groin injuries. It’s too early to say how bad,” said Bilic.

“Two groin injuries is strange,” he said, before pausing and adding: “It’s strange to me that we have so many injuries. There are too many of them.”

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With the trip to Blackpool on Saturday, much will now depend on the club’s medical staff and the extent of the injuries regarding what sort of defensive options Bilic has.

“We’re not the finished article, not at all. It’s a long, long season in the Championship and last night is not what we were looking for,” said Bilic.

“But we’re going to grow, although we need to start having players come back from injuries.

“We have a group of real quality players who unfortunately are not available at the moment. We have nine more games before the next international break. It’s not one or two, it’s nine. Hopefully and crucially we need to get the players back as soon as possible.

“I’m not going to cry about it though. It is what it is. You have to go through these tough spells.”