MARCO Silva questioned his Fulham side’s ruthless streak after Saturday’s 3-1 home defeat to Everton put a serious dent in their European prospects.
The Cottagers began strongly and deservedly went ahead courtesy of Raul Jimenez in the seventeenth minute.
But they failed to capitalise on several chances which came their way and paid the price when Vitalii Mykolenko equalised against the run of play on the stroke of half-time.
Everton were much improved after the break and sealed victory thanks to goals from Michael Keane and Beto to leave Silva’s side four points behind Brentford in what could be the final European spot of eighth.
Fulham have lost five of their last seven league games.
The SW6 boss said: “The reality is when you arrive in certain areas of the pitch we have to finish the moments, we have to end the moments and in a way to be decisive.
“I mentioned to the players at half-time as well that those are the moments you have to take the responsibility, to finish, to win and to try and punish them.
“We have to look to ourselves and to do our job for ourselves. If you don’t do what we should it doesn’t matter what the other [teams] are able to do.
“Of course it is much, much more difficult right now and we have to look at ourselves and analyse why in the last six or seven games we haven’t been at the level that we should.
“I really think that this season with the way we’ve been playing throughout the season most of the times it deserves a better end and you have to work for it.”
Fulham began brightly and broke the deadlock when Jimenez climbed above Mykolenko to head home Emile Smith Rowe’s inviting delivery.
Harry Wilson almost added a second with a curling shot from outside the box which flew just wide and the Welshman again went close shortly before the break forcing a decent save from Jordan Pickford.
However, Everton drew level with the last kick of the half as Mykolenko’s drive from outside the area deflected off Andreas Pereira on its way past goalkeeper Bernd Leno.
Pickford was alert to tip over Wilson’s angled volley early in the second half, but it was Everton who went in front on 70 minutes through Keane when he headed past Leno from Dwight McNeil’s corner.
Things went from bad to worse just three minutes later as Leno made a complete hash of Beto’s shot as the Toffees went 3-1 up.
There was late drama when referee Michael Salisbury decided not to award Fulham a stoppage-time penalty despite VAR sending him over to the screen to have another look.
Mykolenko had his arm raised when blocking Adama Traore’s cross but the official stuck with his original call not to point to the spot.
It would only have been a consolation, though, and Silva was in no doubt it was Fulham who shot themselves in the foot.
He said: “We have to blame ourselves, as simple as that. We have to blame ourselves the way we conceded goals.
“In the first 30 minutes they were as they should be – dominant.
“There were some very good moments, we score a great goal creating from the side that we prepared.
“We knew that most of the time Sander [Berge] is going to be the spare player on the pitch and we found him most of the time during the first half very well.
“We had chances from Alex [Iwobi], two good chances from H (Wilson) – these are the moments when we are on top of the game we should be more ruthless and more clinical.”
Fulham travel to Brentford this Sunday (3pm) when they can cut the gap to Thomas Frank’s side to one point with a win.
