Fulham man eyes upset against Middlesbrough

Midfielder Kevin McDonald believes Fulham can take their good early-season form into Wednesday’s League Cup game against Middlesbrough at Craven Cottage.

The Whites are unbeaten so far, taking eight points from their opening four league matches, and are among a group of teams chasing pace-setters Huddersfield Town.

McDonald and many of his team-mates are aware of the threats Middlesbrough pose – last season, the Scot was in the Wolves team beaten twice by a Boro side on their way to the Premier League, while Fulham failed to score against them.

“Boro at home is obviously a tough game,” he said. “They’re recently promoted and had a great team last year.

“There might be a lot of changes from both teams but we want to continue our unbeaten streak and we’ll go and give it our best shot again.

“It’ll be a tough game, there’s no hiding from that, and we’re going to need to apply ourselves and hopefully we can go through to the next round.”

McDonald struck the equaliser against Cardiff on Saturday to prevent a first defeat of the campaign.

Fulham had been 1-0 up at half-time, after Ryan Sessegnon’s history-making goal, but McDonald admitted they paid the price for allowing their levels to drop after the break.

He said: “The last 10 minutes we gave it a good push when we knew we needed to, but from the standards we’ve set, it wasn’t the best second half for us, compared to the first half when we had pure control.

“They scored two great goals, two wonder strikes, but that’s football. Second half we weren’t at the races at all so maybe all in all a draw was a fair result, but we know we’ve got to do better than that.”