Bernd Leno says Fulham’s first half capitulation at Nottingham Forest on Tuesday evening was unacceptable and the players have to ‘look in the mirror’ ahead of this weekend’s meeting with Newcastle United.

The German goalkeeper was beaten three times in a wretched first half at the City Ground that left Fulham with a mountain to climb after the Whites rescued a point having been 3-1 down with five minutes to play at bottom-of-the-table Sheffield United four days earlier.

Leno told the club’s official website earlier this afternoon:

“The way we started was not good, was not right. Forest deserved to be 3-0 up. Our body language, the intensity we played, was just not good enough, and in the Premier League they punish you for that. After the game, Marco Silva said the same as at half-time, that it just wasn’t good enough.

It was our fault, everyone has to look in the mirror, it was just ourselves. I think this is the right message, nobody was complaining about others, everyone has to look at himself. There’s nothing to hide, there’s nothing good to say about the game, we just have to focus on the next game and improve many things.

It’s very frustrating, because we know that we can beat the big teams, especially at home we can beat everyone. But we also know that away from home we are struggling, we don’t have consistency in our game, we concede sloppy goals, and that’s what we have to improve. I think we are doing really well, but if we had more consistency we could be much higher in the table, we could have much more points, and it would be even more enjoyable. And that’s where we have to improve in the last seven games.”

The German international feels that Fulham can challenge Newcastle this weekend – despite being on the end of stinging defeats in all of their previous meetings since he moved to the Cottage.

“In both games we were competing with them. he Premier League game we were one man down after 20, 25 minutes, and that’s a different game. I think they’re a little bit like us – anything can happen. We played them in the cup and we had a good game but unfortunately we couldn’t score and they were very clinical in front of goal.

Hopefully we can turn things around, I think the team has as much motivation as possible to get a better feeling to go into the next weeks with a win. Especially at home we are very dominant, we play our game, even against teams like Arsenal, Tottenham, Villa at home – we dominated all of them. That’s how we’ll try to play again, and we are very confident of getting another home win.”