Roy Hodgson is adamant Fulham are still worthy of a Premier League place even after defeat by a Liverpool side who rested eight players ahead of Tuesday's Champions League collision with Chelsea.
The result made it almost certain the Craven Cottage club will taste life in the Coca-Cola Championship next season.
Hodgson, brought in just after Christmas to try to arrest a Fulham nosedive towards relegation, admits he now needs his side to take "at least seven, probably nine points" from their three remaining fixtures at home to Birmingham City, and away to Manchester City and Portsmouth to have any hope of survival.
Fulham have won only five league games all season - including last week's 2-0 breakthrough at Reading, their first away from home in 34 matches - but Hodgson insisted: "I'm certainly not prepared to say that Fulham are a team that's not worthy of a place in the Premier League. I've got no reason to say that.
"I think we've had nearly full houses in every home game since I've been here and I don't think you can suggest that, just because we are in the bottom three we are a club that don't deserve this status.
"If you want to say to me 'do I think Fulham are a Premier League club in the same way as Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United?' are then the obvious answser is no, we are not at that level.
"But we all know there is a gulf of difference between the top four and the rest of the league and I do think that if we ever got a decent run at it we could establish ourselves as a middle-of-the-table team.
"The trouble is we have been flirting with this situation for the last few seasons and if we get out of it as I still hope we will, it is going to be very close again but it is never going to be easy to get a foothold."
Hodgson, 60, also insists he has no regrets about taking the job after Lawrie Sanchez was sacked having become the latest boss to lift Fulham above the perenniel scrap at the bottom.
He shrugs off suggestions that owner Mohammed Al Fayed, who has had eight different managers in ten years - and only one, Kevin Keegan, actually chose to leave - intends making another change soon.
He said: "I've enjoyed working at Fulham. It will be very sad if it is not going to be Premier League next year but I knew I was taking on a very difficult job and knew it would be very difficult to turn things around."
For once Hodgson picked an unchanged team against Liverpool, who made nine changes in the corresponding game last season when Fulham's 1-0 win proved the lifeline ever for them to beat the drop.
This time they had plenty of possession but goalkeeping errors by veteran Kasey Keller helped Jermaine Pennant, with a cracking finish in the first half, and Peter Crouch, whose firm shot went through the American stopper's legs, made Liverpool's win a cruise despite Hodgson's view that "we often denied the supposed gulf in class."
Finland's Antti Niemi, number one Fulham keeper until March when he suffered a shoulder injury, is fit again and despite Hodgson's enduring refusal to slate any of his players' performances - "I didn't blame the keeper at all," he insisted - could be back for the daunting final run-in.
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