Martin Djetou admitted he was bitterly disappointed with Fulham’s narrow defeat at the hands of near neighbours Chelsea in the SW6 derby – and accepted the blame for Hernan Crespo’s decisive winner.

The French utility man, who continued his comeback from a prolonged period of injury struggles as a substitute, felt that Fulham had forgotten many of the lessons that have underpinned their success this season under Chris Coleman.

Djetou told the club’s official website:

“It was very hard out there. We wanted to fight to win the game but too often we forgot to play football. When we won the ball there were too many times that we did nothing with it, we just gave it away again. We really didn’t get our passing game together, and I think the way we played gave confidence to Chelsea. Chelsea are a great team, everybody knows that, but we should have done better against them.

“When a match starts you have a fifty-fifty chance – there are only two teams out there and what’s gone before counts for nothing. What you do on the day is what matters. e didn’t do too badly in the first half but in the second it wasn’t so good. We played very deep and allowed Chelsea too much time.”

Djetou admitted he was partially responsible for Chelsea’s second half winner.

“We let ourselves down for their goal. I should have stayed in the middle, but I went out wide to cover Joe Cole, and in that situation if Cole doesn’t get the ball then they have the opportunity to change their attack and run with the ball. When I look back at that game I would say that we should have been able to get a nil-nil or a one-one result, but all we have is three points lost. So now we need to start again and win against Southampton and get another run going.

The players are very, very disappointed. The position we are in is that there are many teams separated by only a few points and we know that if you don’t keep getting results you can slip right down. We wanted points today – at least one – so we feel we have let ourselves and the fans down. We know that we have to carry on working as hard as we have done only we have to do everything better. It’s good that we’ve got the Southampton game coming up quickly so that we don’t have too much time to think about the defeat.”