WE WON’T BE FULS AGAIN

Jokanovic: Don’t focus on our play-off record, everything’s in place to get it right this time..

SLAVISA JOKANOVIC believes Fulham finally have the “experience” and the “weapons” to win the play-offs – after falling at the semi-final stage last year.

The Cottagers find themselves in the end-of-season lottery after agonisingly missing out on automatic promotion to the Premier League on the final day of the campaign.

Ominously, the west Londoners have a nightmare record in the play-offs, including their defeat to Reading 12 months ago, and teams who have finished third in the Championship have often seemed cursed.

But boss Jokanovic (top right) said: “I don’t have the time to be disappointed, I don’t have time for crying, I don’t have time to not trust my team. I don’t have time for looking behind.

“What I must do is look forward and trust in my team, trust in my people, and push them to be successful.”

Jokanovic has seen the response he wanted from his players after they missed out on second place to Cardiff, following their final-day 3-1 defeat at Birmingham, their ill-timed first loss in 24 league matches.

But in the play-offs Fulham have yet to win in six attempts and four of the last five teams to finish third have also failed in the season-ending lottery. The Serb, who guided Watford to automatic promotion to the Premier League in 2015, said: “This is just part of the statistics. This kind of situation can do nothing for us.”

Fulham lost to the Royals in last year’s play-offs (below, Tom Cairney), but Jokanovic said: “No, I cannot describe how I felt after it, really. I forget this game!

“I did not watch this game. I did not do any analysis of this game. I am not interested about this game.”

But he believes last year’s nearmiss will prove to be a valuable experience this time.

He said: “We are a more experienced team. We are a little bit different. We have had a better regular part of the season, if we compare with the year before.

“Probably, we have some different weapons in our team. I expect definitely we are going to be more successful this time in the play-offs.

“Our season was fantastic and many teams want to be in a position where we are right now.

“We have great confidence and a great chance to bring the team into the Premier League.

“This is our target. I expect in a few months we are going to be up.”

MAC THE STRIFE Kevin Mcdonald dejected as a chance goes begging in the play-off loss to Reading MIDFIELDER Bradley Johnson says Derby will prove they are not promotion bottlers. The playmaker reckons Gary Rowett’s side are mentally tougher than...