West Ham United boss Avram Grant was disappointed to lose against a team struggling at the bottom like themselves following a 1-0 home loss to Birmingham. The Hammers are now rooted to the bottom of the table and are three points behind their rivals.
Grant said of the loss: "[I'm] very disappointed; this is the first time we have lost against a team near us. Today was very important, we could have won the game in the first half but second half we didn't deal well with the set pieces with the top player they had, and unfortunately we lost."
The former Portsmouth boss admitted they were aware of the danger of Zigic following the team's recent clashes in the semi-final of the Carling Cup, and was left frustrated that they again failed to deal with the giant Serbian.
"Of course they scored from two corners in the Carling Cup semi-final and in the first leg they scored here [Upton Park]. I'm not happy with this but we need to deal with this guy [Zigic] as he is good and the delivery is good, and we need to do better with this.
"I think we gave them an easy free-kick when we know that is their strength. I think we also gave them easy fouls."
The Israeli was keen to look to the future and move on from the defeat: "We need to think about the next game, the disappointing thing is that we lost to a team near us so it was a game of six points. But this has happened and we need to take the positives from the last weeks and look forward.
"It will be a battle until the end; [this] situation is not easy and it is not easy to lose players - losing Matthew Upson after 35 minutes - but we have got to take points and we have the quality to do it.
"As you have seen we started the season disappointingly but we recovered well and this is the part we are working on, and I hope it will be like this again. There's always good psychology and we carried some good momentum from Wednesday.
"I don't think time is running [out] as there are still 12 games to go and not many points between all the teams in the relegation zone. We have time to do it but we want to do it as quickly as we can.
"We have made one step forward and two steps back and we need to learn from this as it will be a battle to the end. We deserve to stay [up] but we need to do it and not lose games like this."
