Fulham boss rues defending after Burnley defeat

Fulham boss Kit Symons felt his side’s poor first-half defending had undermined their attempts to keep their unbeaten run going at Burnley.

Former Brentford striker Andre Gray scored twice before the break and although Ross McCormack pulled one back, the Whites were unable to find an equaliser despite spells of pressure.

And Symons was left to rue a bad start to the game as they suffered their first defeat in six Championship matches.

He said: “I thought we played very well second half and were unlucky not to get anything out of the game.

“But we gave away two very poor goals first half. You can’t give Andre Gray a free header and then a clean run through on our goal, which is what we did.

“We gave ourselves a bit of a mountain to climb but I said to the players at half-time we know we can come back from it because we did it a couple of weeks ago against Reading.

“We nearly got ourselves back into this game – we got a good goal from Ross and had a few other opportunities – but things wouldn’t quite fall for us.”

Symons, who revealed that goalkeeper Andy Lonergan may miss up to six weeks with a hamstring injury, was also disappointed with the quality of service given to Moussa Dembele and substitute Matt Smith as they chased an equaliser.

He said: “You’ve got Matt and Moussa who are both very strong in the air and real threats. We got in plenty of crosses, but just maybe the quality of them wasn’t as good as I would have liked.”