Ange Postecoglou was left frustrated after ‘we let a game get away from us’ and suffered a 2-0 loss in the Premier League against Fulham at Craven Cottage on Sunday.
In a game of few chances, it was stalemate at 0-0 going into the final 15 minutes. However, that’s when Fulham struck, first a low shot into the corner from Rodrigo Muniz to open the scoring on 77 minutes, the second from a familiar face, Ryan Sessegnon, who pinged into the top corner with two minutes remaining.
At the other end, Dominic Solanke went close twice with headers, and was denied late by Bernd Leno, who also produced a flying save to keep out Mathys Tel’s curler. Lucas Bergvall also went down in the box at 0-0, but appeals for a penalty were waved away by Andrew Madley.
“It’s a disappointing loss,” Ange told us afterwards. “It was a tight game, we knew it would be, and up until they scored, I thought we were the better team. We had some big chances to go one up, Vic didn’t really have a save to make, but then we conceded a soft goal. We’ve done that number of times this year and that allows the opposition grow into the game.
“Up until to that point... especially in the second half, I thought we started really positively. First half, I thought we were good without the ball, but with the ball we just lacked a little bit of calmness and cohesion. I thought that was better in the second half. As I said, we had a couple of really good chances to get the first goal, but even within that, even at 0-0, we shouldn’t be conceding goals like we have.”
Ange on the frustration of another league defeat...
“It’s very frustrating. I don’t like losing, we’ve lost too much this year, and I said that to the boys, we can’t accept that, it’s just not good enough for a club like ours to lose as many games as we have this year. That’s disappointing and we’re need to address it.”
Ange on Archie Gray’s display in midfield...
“I thought Archie was good. We know he’s a player who is very adaptable, there was an opportunity to get him in there and it was important for him to get some game time today because he hasn’t played the last couple and when we get back (from the international break) we’ve got the turn arounds again of Thursday-Sunday, so it was good for him to get some experience in the middle of the park, and I thought he did well.”