Slavisa Jokanovic was upset to exit the Carabao Cup, but took more positives away from Manchester City than recent matches.
Brahim Diaz struck in either half to earn the holders progression to the Quarter-Finals, but Fulham showed a lot more resilience than had been evident of late.
“We cannot be happy because we lost the game,” Jokanovic confessed. “We had the intention to be competitive, respect the competition, and try and go through.
“At the end of the day, we made some positive things, we showed some better kind of the defensive organisation than in the past, and we continued our learning and improving process.
“We played against City’s second team, if I can call this a second team. In this team was [Kevin] De Bruyne, [Vincent] Kompany, [Gabriel] Jesus, and these kinds of players.
“We tried to play football, be competitive and show our best face to pass into the next round. This game served to show us that we can be a little bit more organised, make less mistakes, show we can be a team off the ball, too.
“I’m unhappy with the result but some positives exist that I look at with optimism.
“Obviously they showed their quality, they showed the power and the speed. We made less mistakes but we still made some kind of mistake and could have found some better actions when they scored the goals.”
He added: “I believe in myself, I must believe in my team. We know it’s not an easy job ahead of us, [but] it wasn’t easy last season, the season before, or three seasons ago when we were fighting not to be relegated.
“We need to not cry so much, and try to find a solution. We are in a situation where our supporters expect a better performance, and we are working in this direction.”
The Whites only have to wait four days until our next test, and it’s a vital one as we face Huddersfield Town on Monday – another side currently residing in the Premier League’s bottom three.
“It’s a really important game for both teams,” our Head Coach admitted. “We are going to go there with every intention of winning the game.
“It’s not the last game in the Premier League. Victory would be a really important step for us, but it’s definitely not the last step.
“If we don’t take this step there’s still a long period for us to do everything to reach our targets.”
