Dalglish slams Liverpool effort

Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish has slammed his side’s ‘bad attitude’ after they fell 1-0 to Fulham at Anfield on Tuesday.

Martin Skrtel’s own goal five minutes in proved decisive, consigning the Merseyside club to their 13th defeat in the Premier League this season.

The win was Fulham’s first ever at Anfield and moves the London-based club equal on points with Liverpool, who remain in eighth place with a superior goal difference.

Dalglish made nine changes to the starting line-up that defeated Norwich 3-0 last weekend and was hard-pressed to find positives ahead of Liverpool’s trip to Wembley for the FA Cup final against Chelsea on Saturday.

“(The players’) attitude wasn’t right and if you go in with a bad attitude you’re going to get bad performances and that’s what we got,” Dalglish said.

“I’m culpable as well because I changed the players to try and give everybody an opportunity to get in the frame for Saturday so I suppose by doing that that was a contributory factor to what happened.

“There were one or two positives but as I say there were too many negatives. If you go into a game with a bad attitude you’re going to get nothing and that’s what we deserve, nothing.

“It’s just not right, it’s not correct to go about your work that way.”

Fulham first-team coach Billy McKinlay cut a stark contrast to Dalglish after again taking the reins in the absence of manager Martin Jol, who continues to recover from a chest infection.

McKinlay was full of praise for the side that bounced back from a 4-0 drubbing by Everton last weekend.

“Many things pleased me tonight,” McKinlay said.

“The performance first and foremost, the result is a consequence of that and I think we started the game quite well.

“The response for Saturday’s poor performance was evident and all credit to the players I think they’re the ones that deserve the plaudits.

“I don’t really worry about history or statistics much, the shape of the team was good, the players’ work ethic was terrific and I couldn’t be more pleased.

“Everything that could have gone wrong on Saturday (against Everton) went wrong, in all aspects of the game.

“I said after the game that we couldn’t really hold our hand up and say we were pleased with any one side of the game.

“We want to progress and build on our good performances over the last three or four years; two games to go, six points – that’s a target to push us as high up the league as possible.”

Fulham host Sunderland next up at Craven Cottage on Sunday before rounding out their season away to Tottenham.