Fulham’s players need to stop surrendering and take responsibility

Fulham fan Kris Balkin is a worried man after the defeat by Bristol City – and urges the players to take responsibility…

“I could see it coming”, a deflated Ross McCormack told the Fulham website after Bristol City’s comeback win at Craven Cottage on Saturday.

And that makes you wonder two things. Firstly, why wasn’t something done about it? If it’s that obvious to the players that we’re sitting too deep and welcoming too much pressure, why wouldn’t you change something?

Secondly, and perhaps more pertinently, does this mean that our players, and in this instance our very best player, are so bereft of confidence and fight that they find themselves mentally prepared for the ignominy of defeat, even in the middle of a match they are winning?

Because, if you watched the game, or had any inkling of the way it turned so viciously on its head at half-time, you’d have to assume that yes, this team is indeed short of anything resembling confidence.

They were short of ideas, too – and desire, commitment and determination; any traits that make a football team actually worth watching.

Fulham simply gave up on Saturday. It was clear that, at half-time and with Fulham ahead, manager Lee Johnson fired up his Bristol City team in the dressing room and changed their shape and approach.

They came out for the second half intent to turn things around. Fulham came out intent to let them.

And that is our problem. We have no lack of talent – and how many times am I going to have to say this about Fulham? – just a severe lack of passion.

It’s almost as if – and it hurts to say this about a group of players that do, every now and then, put in stellar performances – there is a rotten core to this team.

They nonchalantly stroll around for 90 minutes on a matchday, collect their earnings and repeat the cycle week-on-week.

There are exceptions to the rule, of course. Scott Parker has been consistently solid for some time now and though McCormack can be up and down, his performances continue to suggest he is the best player in the Championship.

Yet, if one thing summed this whole sorry mess up, it’d be Moussa Dembele, subbed off on 84 minutes with his team drawing 1-1 in a relegation six-pointer that, realistically, Fulham needed to win.

This is when you run off, keen to let the game continue so your side can push on for a late winner.

But no, Dembele insisted on walking off. The fans jeered, and reasonably so, but he didn’t respond.

He’d had a bad day and he wasn’t about to pick up the pace just to appease his team-mates and 16,000 home fans who had paid to watch him play. Not a chance.

How do you flush this kind of inherent petulance and indifference out of a team, though?

You have to hope Slavisa Jokanovic has tried, and you’d think Kit Symons did before him. So too Felix Magath, Rene Meulensteen and Martin Jol, but it persists; an undercurrent of player apathy towards this club.

All Jokanovic can do is carry on, rally the troops once more and hope they heed his message. The Serbian made errors on Saturday, too, but it’s reached a point now where we have to look beyond scapegoating the manager, or the questionable choices of Shahid Khan and his henchmen.

The players are the ones we have to look at, because performing for 45 minutes at a time just won’t cut it in this league. We should have learned that last season.

It’s about time they stepped up, accepted their considerable flaws and put in a shift for this football club. It’s the only way we’ll remain a Championship side.