Hull defender Michael Dawson is set to be out for at least a month with a hamstring tear.
Dawson suffered the injury in the first 10 minutes of last weekend's defeat by Chelsea and scans revealed a grade two tear.
Dawson has already missed a month of the season with an ankle problem but impressed manager Steve Bruce enough to earn the captain's armband for two matches while regular skipper Curtis Davies was dropped.
"Unfortunately it's a grade two tear and it could be anything from three, four, five weeks minimum I'd have thought," Bruce said.
"That's happened to much to us from the first day of the season with Robert Snodgrass to Dawson, to [Nikica] Jelavic to [Mohamed] Diame ... it's been one thing after another in that department.
"We could do with a little more luck because we've had four or five with pretty ugly injuries and we could without it."