Thursday, August 24, 2006

COLEMAN HAILS FULHAM SPIRIT

Fulham celebrate Jimmy Bullard's goal

Fulham boss Chris Coleman felt his side showed courage to bounce back from their Old Trafford horror show and secure a point against Bolton.

Jimmy Bullard tucked home a 90th-minute penalty, awarded when Abdoulaye Faye handled the ball, to secure a dramatic share of the spoils at Craven Cottage.

It had been a desperately poor game that only burst into life when Luis Boa Morte brought down Gary Speed, who was racing in to meet El-Hadji Diouf's pass.

Referee Alan Wiley pointed to the spot, Diouf converted the 73rd-minute penalty and from then on the game was played with more urgency.

Fulham, reeling from Sunday's 5-1 rout by Manchester United, refused to give up and were rewarded when Faye blundered - leaving Coleman to hail their fighting spirit.

He said: "We're disappointed we didn't win the game. We were annihilated against Manchester United on Sunday. It was 5-1 and could have been worse.

"We were shellshocked and we had to show a bit of character to put that behind us.

"It's never easy against Bolton. They're physical, direct and organised but it was all us.

"We were 1-0 down in a game we should have been winning but the players kept going even with five minutes left.

"They dug in and got a penalty. That showed great character on our part."

The draw was a fair outcome of a largely dreadful spectacle, even if Fulham were marginally on top throughout.

Bolton, who had lost every game at Craven Cottage since 2001, now have four points from their opening two games following Saturday's triumph over Tottenham.

But boss Sam Allardyce felt his side's 100% record should have remained intact and left little doubt who he blamed for the dropped points.

He said: "The outcome wasn't hard on us. It was childish and unforgivable for something like that to happen given what we'd done up until then.

"It has been difficult for us at Craven Cottage over the last five seasons no matter how we've played and we set out nullify their strengths.

"Apart from a couple of free kicks and their penalty they had nothing. We tried to turn our bad run here around and looked very comfortable until we committed that error.

"It is very disappointing that Abdoulaye has done something childish like that. He's 6ft 4ins and can head the ball 60 yards when he wants to so I don't know why he didn't head it out.

"He can't use the excuse he was fatigued because he only came on in the second half as a substitute. We even put him there to stop Fulham bombarding us with balls.

"We wanted to stop the rot here and did a great job by preventing them from shooting only to throw it away like that."

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