Leicester City told themselves victory was for the taking at Fulham but they ultimately slipped to their first defeat of the season. City manager Steve Cooper and his squad spoke confidently of clinching the three points at Craven Cottage after they went into the half-time break level. A second-half turnaround was crucial to the point City earned against Tottenham, but they did not muster much attacking threat after the interval at Craven Cottage, and conceded a winner to Alex Iwobi with 20 minutes to play.
In his assessment of the performance,
Steve Cooper said “I thought Fulham took control more than us and had the territory and went 1-0 up. A couple of minutes after that where he didn’t manage the game well, we then worked our way back into the game and got some good moments, some dangerous attacks and got back into the game through a set-piece. At half-time, we were really confident we would go and win the game. We felt the game was there for us. There was a lot of tension but we couldn’t capitalise on that. Then we got into the phase of tired legs and changes, and that second goal came in that phase. “The two goals we’ve conceded are real examples of what happens when you’re not quite right with your decision-making and your tactical ideas. You can get punished. That’s what we did with both goals in presenting the opportunities for Fulham and the space we gave. We pushed hard and showed some great resilience in the first two games to not give up. It’s a non-negotiable but it’s not always the case. We never gave up on that. We’re really disappointed that we’ve lost because we should always be that way. We should never accept losing. But there were phases in the game, for our first away game, against an established team and a manager that has been here a while, it looks like there was a result there for us. We have to learn from that, but we also have to see that there were phases in the game where we were the better team and looked like a team that can get results.”
Both of the Fulham goals came from the same area, the hosts capitalising on space in City’s right-back position. Both times James Justin was dragged out of position, but to declare him solely at fault would be unfair, with the full-back forced to cover other gaps in the defence. Certainly, Cooper was not going to blame him. He said analysis will show lots of players could have done better to prevent the goals.
Steve Cooper added “The strength of ours will be how together we are. That’s including supporting each other on a public front. Any goal we concede we can say that everybody can do a bit better. “We’ll analyse it internally. We’ll analyse the whole performance internally. That’s the process of improving, integrating new players, getting used to the level again, and being the team we want to be.”
