Fulham captain Tom Cairney has urged his team-mates to use what he described as a ‘massive’ win over relegation rivals Huddersfield Town as a springboard for the remainder of their season.
The Whites claimed a precious three points over the league’s bottom side in dramatic fashion with an injury-time winner from Aleksandar Mitrovic at Craven Cottage yesterday. Cairney, recalled to the starting line-up for the crunch clash, told the club’s official website that Claudio Ranieri’s men were desperate to triumph in the battle between the Premier League’s bottom two sides.
It’s a massive relief. I think we had to win that game and the boys, especially second half, were brilliant. We were banging on the door for a while and it took until the end of the game to win it, but it’s moments like that which boost your morale and turn seasons around, so hopefully that’ll be the case for us.
The first half was pretty dead really. We kept our shape for large periods but they probably shaded it. But second half we took the game by the scruff of the neck a little bit, played a little bit more football, got a few more men forward. The second half was a good one to play in and was a bit more like us last season so long may that continue.
The Scottish international was full of praise for Mitrovic, who played through a fever and keep his cool when put through by substitute Ryan Sessegnon in the first minute of added time.
He 100 per cent deserved his goal at the end. He was ill on Friday as well, he wasn’t even at training, so he did well to stay on for 90 minutes and give everything like he did, so I was delighted for him to hit the back of the net.
The late winner was all the more welcome after the drama of Aboubakar Kamara refusing to hand over an earlier penalty to Aleksandar Mitrovic – despite the attempts of his team-mates to intervene – and seeing his tame effort saved by Jonas Lossl in the Huddersfield goal.
It’s a hard situation. We tried to give the ball to Mitro because he’s the penalty taker, the number nine, our top goal scorer. But how far do you go? Abou believed he could score which is fair enough but obviously everyone wanted Mitro to take it because he’s the designated taker.
You all saw it, there’s no hiding place, but it’s just one of those things. Thank God we ended up winning the game so it doesn’t matter anywhere near as much as it could have. We’ll just move on now.
