Fulham Head Coach Scott Parker was pleased with his side’s rigidity in the first half but left frustrated with the manner of concession in the second.
A 15-minute onslaught saw three second half goals conceded against the pending 20/21 Premier League Champions.
“I thought in the first half we took the game to City and played very well whilst being solid out of possession,” he stated. “I asked them to be brave in how we set it up. We conceded sloppy goals. The set play goal was poor and then two individual errors that they pounced on.
“We came out in the second half with a platform. The disappointing thing was to concede early. That 15-minute period made it a real uphill task. I didn’t want the game to pass this team by and they didn’t do that, but we struggled in certain moments.”
Tosin Adarabioyo had a tricky time against his former club, but the Head Coach knows with his quality, he will shrug this game off.
“It’s a big learning curve for Tosin,” he said. “He’s been exceptional and top-class for us. But like a lot of the players here, he’s young and developing, they will make mistakes. It’ll be down to how quickly they learn from these errors. He will learn fast; he’ll understand the differences to make and we’ll move on as a team.
“Confidence is key to how we’ve put ourselves in this fighting position. We’re well organised and we’ve been resilient. We’ve come out the other side of these little mistakes throughout the season. We’ll work out where we went wrong and improve.”
Whilst it would be wise to write-off Saturday night’s game at the Cottage, the defeat provides nuggets of areas to improve for Parker’s men.
“We won’t write this off,” he said. “We need to move on, but we need to analyse the way we conceded goals. It’ll be one we need to work out how to improve in those moments. We will look to where we need to be next which is Leeds on Friday.”