LET ME HAVE THE JOB NOW SAYS SYMONS
It’s a first league win for Fulham
CARETAKER manager Kit Symons is a man who knows what he wants, and with a first league victory of the season secured against Birmingham City, the former Cottager has his eyes firmly on the job full-time.
Fulham went seven league games without a win before former manager Felix Magath received his marching orders.
And while Symons was unable to immediately arrest their form against Blackburn last weekend, he oversaw a midweek League Cup win over Doncaster Rovers before steering yesterday’s comeback victory at St Andrews.
Trailing at the break to David Cotterill’s curling effort, the visitors turned things around in the space of eight second-half minutes through goals from Tim Hoogland and Hugo Rodallega.
And while Symons admits there is still plenty of room for improvement, the Welshman knows exactly where his loyalties lay.
“It looks like we’re getting a few slices of luck at the moment, but I’m a firm believer that if you do your work in the week leading up to a game then you deserve a little bit of luck here and there,” said Symons.
“I’ve made it clear from day one that this is the job I’ve always wanted to do. Everybody knows that.
“But I also know that the owner is going to take his time and make sure he finds the right person, which is what I want.
“I love the club, I have a lot of history here, and I want the right person to be in charge.
“Football at this level is all about results – and we got a very positive one. We’ve got lots to work on though.We were pretty awful in the first half and Birmingham were well
worthy of their lead. We turned it around in the second half.
“It was a much better performance and I think we deserved the win.”
Both sides started brightly, with Ross McCormack testing Darren Randolph with a fierce free-kick while Cotterill dragged a shot wide.
Rodallega had a chance to break the deadlock midway through the first half but he fluffed his lines inside the box and minutes later Blues’ Clayton Donaldson somehow managed to head an ever better opportunity wide.
The hosts got their deserved opener on 38 minutes though when Callum Reilly intercepted a loose ball and fed Cotterill who rifled an unstoppable 25-yard shot into the top corner.
Fulham drew level on 63 minutes when a scramble inside the Birmingham box resulted in Hoogland’s deflected shot creeping past Randolph into the bottom corner.
That goal lifted the visitors and Jonathan Spector’s fatal error, when he failed to deal with a cross-field pass, allowed Rodallega to bundle his way round Randolph and fire home. The striker almost added a third but Randolph saved well with his legs with the keeper also denying McCormack late on.
Blues manager Lee Clark, whose side are now winless in their last eight in all competitions, said: “We’re here again. I probably didn’t have to do the interview, just take the recording from the past three games this season.
“We were the dominant team in the first half, one goal up, missed two guilt-edge chances, not half chances, which would have given us a cushion.
“Then we have a setback conceding the equaliser and we absolutely buckled .
“The confidence drained out of us and we turned into a completely different team in terms of what we do on the ball and off the ball.
“It’s something we obviously have to eradicate from our game but that’s got to come from the players. They have to be stronger mentally.
“We need to give ourselves bigger leads by taking our chances.
“We also need to be stronger if we have a setback.
“The second goal is so poor it’s untrue.We needed to keep playing after we conceded the equaliser, keep sticking to the game plan.
“We should have been looking to get the winner. But we didn’t, we packed up and started giving the ball away.”