Fulham boss Scott Parker was clearly in pain after Fulham’s relegation from the Premier League was confirmed, but he’s already turned his attentions to the steps needed to respond in the best possible way next season.
“I’m hurt, I’m gutted,” he said in his post-match press conference. “The players are [too].
“Everyone has tried everything possible, everyone at the Football Club has done everything in their power to try and stay in this division this year.
“What’s important is we’re going to have to have these honest conversations about what we need to do. We’ll do that together, and we’ll try and bounce back.
“There’s been disappointment this year, and we need to put our hands up, we need to get around a table, we need to understand where we want to go as a club, what we need to do.”
There wasn’t much between Fulham and Burnley on Monday night at the Cottage but the visitors left with a 2-0 victory to seal our fate.
And Parker was asked if the fixture represented the Whites’ season in a nutshell.
“Probably – I think that’s a fair assessment of tonight’s game,” he said. “If you’ve not watched us, then that game summed up our year really; very good at times between the boxes, but just fallen short sometimes at both ends.
“I felt that was the same tonight; two poor goals on our behalf, and then for all our good play, getting into those final moments we just lacked that little bit of quality to score a goal.
“I’ve nothing but full respect for my group of players and what they’ve given me this year, in terms of effort and endeavour daily, wanting to improve, wanting to get better, but the facts are that we’ve fallen a little bit short with our quality, hence why we’ve been relegated out of this division.”