Sport : Football

DALGLISH: WE DESERVED NOTHING

1st May 2012, 11:09pm

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Dalglish looks on during the defeat to Fulham

Dalglish looks on during the defeat to Fulham

Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish criticised his players' attitude after a much-changed side lost 1-0 at home to Fulham but also questioned his own decision-making.

With Saturday's FA Cup final against Chelsea in mind the Scot made nine changes - leaving out the likes of Luis Suarez, Steven Gerrard and Craig Bellamy - but saw his team lose to Martin Skrtel's fifth-minute own goal.

Prior to the match Dalglish had challenged his squad to play for cup final places but admitted after the tally of dropped points at home reached an incredible 30 that he may have made a mistake.

"Their attitude was not right and if you get a bad attitude you are going to get a bad performance and that is what we got," he said.

"I think that is an accurate appraisal.

"I am culpable as well as I changed a lot of players to try to give everyone an opportunity to get in the frame for Saturday.

"I suppose by doing that it was a contributory factor to what happened but you can only be fair.

"I tried to be fair and give everyone an opportunity - maybe I was wrong.

"There were one or two positives but there were too many negatives.

"We cannot play at that tempo, we have to play at a quicker tempo than that. We deserved nothing."

Fulham recorded their first win at Anfield after 30 previous attempts and the only down side was manager Martin Jol was not there to see it as he missed his second successive match with a chest infection.

However, unlike Saturday's woeful 4-0 defeat at Everton, first-team coach Billy McKinlay was expecting an easier phone call to his boss.

"Hopefully I'll have a better conversation with him than I did after the game on Saturday and that performance will cheer him up a bit," he said.

"He was close to coming today but an extra day or two was needed to shake off this chest infection."

McKinlay said he was not aware of Fulham's previously poor history on Merseyside - they had not won in 48 league visits to the city's two clubs.

"I wasn't aware. I don't worry about history or statistics too much," he added.

"The response to Saturday's poor performance was evident and they deserve the plaudits.

"I am delighted. Many things pleased me tonight: the performance, first and foremost, with the result a consequence of that.

"I couldn't be more pleased. Everything which could go wrong went wrong on Saturday but tonight there were lots of pleasing things."

end

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