Town boss Mick McCarthy felt that there was no way back for his side once they had conceded two goals he thought were preventable shortly before half-time during their 3-0 defeat at Hull City.
McCarthy's game plan went well for the first 36 minutes until ex-Blue Alex Bruce headed the opening goal and then Chuba Akpom added the second seven minutes later.
"Very much it did,” he said. "And then we let our guard down. They got in behind us, put in a great cross and it was a great header, but he shouldn’t have been able to get into that position for the cross if we’d have done our jobs properly, and I think we should have done better at the far post then.
"But even having conceded that, for the second goal we were in possession of the ball and we lost it very, very softly.
"I’m thinking it’s a great goal if it’s us but we lost it softly, they got in behind us and I still don’t think it should have ended up in our net, to be quite honest with you. We should have defended it better.
"So that changed the dynamic of my mood, my team-talk, my decisions at half-time because at half-time we were still in the game at 1-0, 2-0 it’s killed us all off a little bit.
"For 35 minutes up until they scored I don’t think they’d been any great threat, maybe we hadn’t been but we’d had a number of freekicks and corners and we had them to running towards their own goal and having to pull us down.
"We didn’t make the most of those, but if you concede goals the way we did it’s going to be hard to win games.”
He added: "It was never going to be easy, of course, they’re a good side, and I think that showed in the second half.
"And the third goal [David Meyler’s volley] puts the cherry on the cake for them because it was a fabulous strike, and we were never in it then, it’s a matter of making sure it doesn’t end up more.”
Cole Skuse and David McGoldrick both missed the game due to injuries and McCarthy hopes the duo will be fit for Saturday’s trip to Nottingham Forest.
"I didn’t tell the whole truth yesterday when I was asked if everyone was fit but I didn’t want to be giving my hand away coming here," he added.
"Skusey had a sore ankle, Didzy’s got a sore groin, so that ruled those two out, those two would have been playing.
"We’ll have to wait and see, we’ll see them tomorrow morning, we’ll see how they are and how they both respond to treatment and fingers crossed they’ll be OK.
"Tabby’s got a hamstring problem. It’s been a tough old month by performances, results and injuries. But I suppose that does happen. We’ve got to get back at it.”
The Town boss says he could look at the loan market given the injury situation and current form: "Possibly, but I’m not sure there’ll be loads of them around at moment to be taken on loan and we’ll see anyway. Didzy and Skusey might be fit, let’s have a look at them first tomorrow morning.”
McCarthy says the current spell is his toughest since taking over at Town in November 2012, tougher even than his first season when the Blues were battling against the drop.
"It’s worse for me this, because at that time, it was a tough time, we were scrapping to get out of the relegation zone, which we did, but we were sort of upwardly mobile all the time,” he said.
"This season we started well, I’ve supposedly got a better squad of players, more players, better quality players, we had a really good start, hopes were high and we’ve just had a really bad time for four or five weeks. It’s not pleasant at the moment.”
Tigers boss Steve Bruce, whose son Alex scored his first goal in four years, was delighted with his side's display.
"It was arguably our best performance [this season]. We ran out comfortable winners in the end, but it’s never easy against a Mick McCarthy team, that’s for sure.
"We had good energy, good pace in wide areas and I thought that we had to play two strikers, maybe I should have played that at the weekend.
"It was an all-round good performance and the players that were brought in all did their jobs.”