Fulham boss Chris Coleman has urged his side to rekindle their early season away form against Liverpool at Anfield this weekend.
The Cottagers slumped to a 2-0 away defeat at Blackburn on Saturday and Coleman believes his side must become mentally stronger on their travels.
They have won once in the last five outings – a 2-1 home win over Arsenal – and Coleman wants more consistency as they approach the hectic festive schedule.
Coleman said: “I’ve got to be fair to the players, we’ve had three hard games in a week and I knew it was going to be tough on Saturday but we’ve got to be stronger mentally away from home.
“Physically it’s been taxing for us. We played against Reading with 10 men for 75 minutes before an outstanding performance against Arsenal, so I knew they were going to be a bit jaded on Saturday.
“However, I was disappointed with how we conceded the first goal because we’ve been defending well recently and we should have closed ranks after the first goal was scored. We had a good start to the season on the road but we’ve let ourselves down in the last few games. We’ve got Liverpool on Saturday and we’ve got to believe in ourselves and put in a stronger first half performance.
At Craven Cottage we’ve been terrific this season and we’ve improved away from home compared to last season but we’ve got to get back to the way we were prior to the Manchester City game when we were difficult to beat and dangerous away from home. I don’t like the tag of being inconsistent – we’ve got to ask more of ourselves and produce performances like last Wednesday night more frequently.”
