Slavisa Jokanovic was unsurprised by his side’s failure to make their 76% share of possession tell in the west London derby at Loftus Road yesterday – saying that Fulham’s failure to be clinical ‘is not news‘.
The Whites were grateful to Chris Martin, who had seen an early penalty superbly saved by Alex Smithies, for touching in Tom Cairney’s shot fifteen minutes from time after they had fallen behind to Irish teenager Ryan Manning’s first professional goal following a wretched error from Kevin McDonald. That sparked a remarkably open end to proceedings and the visitors might have felt they should have claimed all three points.
At the moment we are not clinical enough – this is not news. It is a characteristic of my team. But I am really proud of my players. They push really hard and we are working really well.
We came here with the intention to win the game, but at the beginning we made a few important mistakes, missing a penalty. We made one mistake and they scored the first goal.
The pitch was not easy to play our football on. It is not in good condition and it was not easy to move the ball from one side to the other. But we carried on trying to do what we normally do in the game.
Fulham’s Serbian head coach also played down a scuffle towards the end of the game after Marc Bircham blocked a Fulham throw-in from being taken by kicking the ball away from inside Jokanovic’s technical area. The QPR coach also appeared to spit at Jokanovic was sent to the stands, but Jokanovic apologised for his part in the incident.
There was some pushing and nothing spectacular. It is part of the game. If I made a mistake I am sorry. I am a tall guy and it was in my [technical] area that I want to work in. But I don’t believe what happened there is more important than the game
