Fulham manager Marco Silva said Crawley Town showed more will than his Premier League side in Tuesday’s League Cup second round, where they were eliminated after a 2-0 defeat by fourth-tier side.
Silva made 10 changes for the trip to Broadfield Stadium when Fulham, seventh in the top flight after three games, were beaten by Crawley, who are 84 places down in the English rankings.
“It was definitely a poor performance and of course the result,” said Silva. “It throws us out of a competition we wanted to win.
“Congratulations to them, from the first minute they wanted it more than us and after that we lost control of the game a bit, started making some mistakes and they scored, which made it more difficult for us Has.”
Crawley manager Kevin Betsy described her win as “amazing”.
“Little Crawley Town beat Premier League Fulham… What we’ve done is phenomenal,” Betsy told the BBC. “We had a plan of how we wanted to play and that will be our blueprint for the future.”