Fulham boss Slavisa Jokanovic felt his side were not aggressive enough as they went down to a disappointing 2-1 defeat at Burton Albion this afternoon.

The Serbian coach bemoaned the concession of two ‘cheap goals’ and felt referee Stephen Martin’s decision to award the hosts a second-half penalty for a foul on Kyle McFadzean was ‘strange’. Jokanovic insisted he didn’t want to talk too much about the official and was very strident about his own side’s failings after Fulham failed to build on Ollie Norwood’s equaliser.

Jokanovic told his post-match press conference:

We gave them two chances for an advantage, which they took, and in a game on a smaller pitch it is not always easy to score goals. We tried, we moved the ball and we created some chances, but after we gave them the advantage it was hard and we could not score.

He lamented familiar failings that were in stark contrast to Fulham’s fine display at the Pirelli Stadium.

We didn’t play worse than that day [last season] but in different moments we weren’t aggressive enough, we made some costly mistakes. We created the chances like we always make, we missed the chances that we always make. We weren’t aggressive enough, and we paid an expensive price for our mistakes. For a long time we’ve paid an expensive price for similar mistakes.

We want to fight for more things, we want to be better, but right now we have not improved so much. If we don’t show more ambition to win the game against Burton, it’s complicated to think about more important things. The time in front of us is for working and trying to improve. We are not in a good enough level at the moment and we have to push harder to improve

The penalty was strange. Without talking too much, if this is a penalty… There was a situation with Floyd Ayité in the opposite box, one situation is a penalty and the other’s not a penalty. I don’t complain, I don’t want to talk about this, but today it was a strange attitude by the referee.