Fulham will stay honest – Symons

Fulham boss Kit Symons has vowed to keep the Championship promotion race honest after damaging Middlesbrough’s hopes with a stunning 4-3 win.

Ross McCormack completed a hat-trick deep into stoppage time as Boro’ poured forward trying to find a winner of their own to maintain pressure on the front-runners.

Fulham’s final opponents of the season are Norwich, who could still be in contention for the top two if rivals Bournemouth slip up on Monday.

And Symons promised there would be no let-up in performance if the result at Carrow Road could determine who reaches the Premier League.

He said: “The Championship this year has been fantastic all the way through.

“We had to do our bit and put in a good performance and we’ll do the same next week at Norwich.

“Our focus in the last few weeks has been on avoiding relegation. Now that that’s been achieved, we need to go and finish the season as strongly as possible.

“This result makes us five unbeaten. We want to go to Carrow Road and make that six unbeaten.

“We need to maintain the honesty of the division and give it all we’ve got.”

Symons was delighted with his side’s display against Middlesbrough and felt the shackles had been lifted after their safety had been confirmed.

He said: “The pressure was off us. The spectre of relegation was no longer around, so I wanted a really good performance from the players.

“Take away the shabby goals we conceded, I thought we actually played very well and I was delighted to get the result in the end.

“Recent games haven’t been particularly pretty. We’ve had to play a different way and forego certain elements of my footballing principles to make sure we got the results that we needed.

“I was very keen to give the fans a good performance.”

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