Angry Fulham manager Kit Symons says his players ignored his half-time instructions at Bolton Wanderers last night.
The Whites had taken the lead at the Macron Stadium through Shaun Hutchinson but Eidur Gudjohnsen grabbed a crucial equaliser just before the break.
That goal sparked a Trotters revival in the second period in Lancashire as the Cottagers took their foot off the gas and Bolton scored twice in the last 10 minutes to steal the points .
Symons had drilled into his players the importance of maintaining their positivity during the interval but saw his plans go out the window on Tuesday evening.
He said: “First half I thought we played some really good stuff and we were by far and away the better team. We should have come in leading quite comfortably but conceded a poor goal from our point of view.
“But even then if we go out and approach the second half in the same manner we’re going to be fine, but we just sat off them for some reason. Everything that was said [at half-time] was more of the same, get up against them, keep running beyond and causing them problems, and we never did it.
“We suddenly looked nervous on the ball, couldn’t keep possession. When we did win it in and around the edge of our box we were just sort of kicking it rather than passing it out, and we just never got going at all.”
Gudjohnsen struck right on the stroke of half time at the Macron and that goal appeared to be the moment the game turned on its head.
However, Symons insisted that didn’t need to be the case and his Whites could still have gone on to win it had they kept up their intensity from the first period.
He added: “If we’d have played in the same manner in the second half it would’ve been fine.
“I think the second goal was a turning point. The ball’s not quite running for us at the moment – we’re breaking and the ball hits the referee to come back for them and even then we’ve got a lot of bodies back behind the ball and the second goal shouldn’t have been conceded but these little things are going against us at the moment.
“But I couldn’t really see us scoring anyway – we didn’t have a shot on target in the second half, whereas we’d had a lot of efforts in the first half.”
