Martin Jol admitted to being frustrated that Fulham failed to kill Norwich off in a candid assessment of his side’s performance after what turned out to be a jittery last quarter of an hour at Craven Cottage earlier this afternoon.
The Dutch coach honestly conceded that he had ‘mixed feelings’ after a game that Fulham dominated for long spells almost slipped away from them once Aaron Wilbraham’s deflected strike gave the Canaries a late lifeline. Jol felt Fulham failed to translate their fine approach play into goals and that his side failed to respond to Paul Lambert’s tweaking of Norwich’s system at half-time.
I have to say I had mixed feelings after the game. The first half we were well prepared for them and started off well. They changed their system all the time and they do that with a purpose. That was not easy to cope with but I thought we used the right tactics in the first half.
In the second half they changed their formation and forced us to double-up on the flanks, go back and we couldn’t get out of it. Pavel was not there, Andy Johnson
was of course injured so we needed a bit of penetration.
That was probably the reason we could not get out of it but I have to say if you have to defend, you have to defend. I could not change that in this game so I was fairly pleased in the end, although we didn’t play in my style in the second half.
Pavel Pogrebnyak, who was forced off in the first half after a heavy tackle from Elliott Bennett, has suffered an ankle injury and will be assessed by Fulham’s medical staff over the next couple of days.
Pavel went off with something to do with his former injury. He twisted his ankle again so for us it is vital for us that he is back in the next couple of games. I think in the next one or two days we will find out more.
