Centre back Tim Ream reckons Fulham can bounce back from the bitter disappointment of being denied a derby win over Brentford by Neal Maupay’s injury-time equaliser.
Slavisa Jokanovic’s side dropped out of the automatic promotion places after surrendering another late lead at Craven Cottage on Saturday. Ream admitted that only drawing the derby was gut-wrenching but revealed to GetWestLondon that attention had already switched to Friday night’s fixture against Millwall.
Ream said: “There’s no two ways about it, we know what the situation is and know that starting with Millwall, we have to win. There’s no getting around that. It’s tough to take, we’ve drawn games in this run so it’s a game we now need to put behind us and get ready for Millwall.
I think we’ve shown a mental toughness through the entire run, just because we concede in the 94th minute doesn’t mean we’re not mentally tough. It’s just a matter of dusting ourselves down and going again.”
Ream insisted that praise from pundits counts for nothing – and that only points will suffice for Fulham at this stage of the season.
“They’re just words, people can say what they want to say at the end of the day. People are saying things about Cardiff, and again, does it matter? It’s about results, it’s a results driven business and we’re in it to win it. We’ve proved the past couple of games we don’t have to play the best or turn on the style as much as we would like, and we haven’t the last three or four games, but we’ve still ground out wins and today was just one of those days.”
The American defender is philosophical at the prospect of the play-offs after a difficult start to the season.
“I wouldn’t call it a disappointment, we dug ourselves a hole in the first part of the season. 21 games is nothing to scoff at, if we make automatic then great, we know that we have the play-offs to prepare for if, for whatever reason, we miss out on the second spot. I think we’ll look back on certain results and be disappointed, but you can’t be disappointed until all the games are finished.”
