Fulham defender Aaron Hughes insists he and his team mates must not dwell on the 4-1 defeat to Manchester City but instead focus their attention on the upcoming game against Birmingham City.

Fulham began the game slowly and were punished by a rampant City side that played with more freedom than usual and Hughes admits that the first half killed the game for Fulham:

“We know that if you don’t play well against top sides they can do that to you,” he told fulhamfc.com.

“Their first goal came early, but even at 1-0 down we kept going and tried to have a go, but it was the second and third goal in the space of three minutes that really killed the game off.

“It was just one of those days when things went wrong. Now we need to pick ourselves up and go again next week.

“There were a few things that went wrong really in the first-half. And over a 20 minute spell the game just slipped away from us.”

Hughes admitted it was a foreign feeling for his team to have lost so heavily but is keen to stress that they must move on as quickly as possible.

“Overall it was a massive disappointment, and one we haven’t experienced very often – not in terms of not getting beat, but in the way we got beaten,” he added.

“So we’ll pick ourselves up, work hard this week in training and have a good go at Birmingham next week.

“We just need to get back into training, work on the same things we do each week, and look at the areas which will help us get a good result next weekend. And that’s what we’ll do.

“Some days are like this – sometimes you have good days, and other times you have bad days – you just learn to try and stay mentally somewhere in the middle, do all the things your normally do and try not to make too much of a deal out of it.”