Dempsey delight at Fulham win

Fulham forward Clint Dempsey has hailed the importance of his side’s win over Liverpool which sees them move away from the relegation zone.

The American’s 85th-minute winner, following up a Pepe Reina spill, gave his side a 1-0 victory in an end-to-end encounter and moves his side up to 13th in the Premier League.

“Any points you can get now are big because the table is tight. We’re happy to get the win and hopefully we can start playing better,” he told Sky Sports.

“You’ve always got to take your chances, Danny (Murphy) did a good job to get the shot off and I was just trying to be in the right place at the right time. Sometimes you get lucky and it bounces for you to get a goal.”

A red card shown to Jay Spearing swung the tide of the match after Liverpool had dominated up to the hour mark and Dempsey admitted the decision played a big part in the result.

“We had more space and time on the ball and were able to open them up a bit and started creating more chances,” he said,

“It’s been frustrating for us because we haven’t been able to score enough goals but we’ve got one tonight and we’ve got three points.”

Dempsey’s team-mate Stephen Kelly was also proud of his team’s effort after a string of poor recent results.

“It was a desperately needed win. We’ve been playing well but we haven’t been getting the rub of the green,” he said.

“I think as soon as the player got sent off it gave us the advantage and we took that on we pushed on.”

“Clint following up that shot was fantastic to give us the three points we desperately needed and it pushes up the table which is nice to look at for us.”

The 28-year-old praised both goalkeepers who, Reina’s late error aside, put in outstanding performances to keep two attacking sides at bay.

“(Mark) Schwarzer pulled off a couple of good saves from distance the same with Reina who stopped a couple of one-on-ones with Moussa (Dembele) and Clint,” he said.