Tom Cairney was left annoyed that the only difference between Fulham and Liverpool was a contentious penalty.
The Reds were awarded the spot-kick when Darwin Nunez went down in the proximity of Issa Diop, but replays suggested that the centre-back managed to avoid contact.
“I thought we played very well at times, but to lose to a penalty that wasn’t a penalty is always a kick in the you-know-whats,” Cairney said.
“At the time, I wasn’t sure [if it was a penalty]. The ref made a decision, I thought he’d seen contact. I asked him on the pitch, ‘please just make sure they check it.’
“He said they checked it, but he said second half to one of our players that it wasn’t a penalty, so it’s frustrating because it goes to other people to make the correct decision.
“Issa Diop hasn’t touched him, Nunez has taken another step and then gone over, and then you lose to something like that at Anfield which is frustrating when we’re trying to climb as high as we can.”
Fulham posed a significant goal threat throughout the contest, with Carlos Vinicius twice thwarted by Alisson, while Bobby De Cordova-Reid almost snatched a dramatic equaliser with the last kick of the game.
“We got stronger as the game went on, and then as you saw in the second half, there was only one team looking to score,” Cairney stated. “We missed a couple of chances where we could have done better, but we pushed a top class team all the way.
“We’ve made massive, massive strides this season, which people didn’t expect us to, so we can take a lot of positives from that moving forward.”
Asked how big a difference this season has been compared to our previous Premier League campaigns, our skipper replied: “Enormous, enormous.
“If we said we’d be above Chelsea after 34 games at the start of the season, people wouldn’t have believed us. We’re in the top half, and we deserve to be.
“Honestly, performance-wise, we’ve done really well all season. A newly promoted team coming to Anfield and pushing to score at 1-0 down in the 90th minute, shows how far we’ve come.
“We’ve just said in [the changing room] we’ve got four games left, four cup finals. We’ve set our own targets in our minds, our goals for the football club, and we’re looking to do that.”
