Sunday 26 April 2015 17:28, UK
Middlesbrough manager Aitor Karanka was left ruing the bold decision to send up goalkeeper Dimitrios Konstantopoulos for a stoppage-time corner after Fulham scored on the counter-attack to win 4-3.
The defeat represents a mighty setback for Boro's hopes of automatic promotion from the Sky Bet Championship - a Bournemouth victory at home to Bolton on Monday will effectively consign the Teessiders to the play-offs.
Konstantopoulos came charging upfield in the hope of completing a fairytale comeback after Boro had recovered from falling 3-1 behind to level. But the ball was cleared and found its way to Ross McCormack, who had already scored two penalties, and the Scot completed his hat-trick by finding the unguarded net.
Karanka when asked if he had given Konstantopoulos the signal to go up front, said: "Yes, because I felt that one point wasn't enough and we needed three points.
"Now I am sitting here at the table one point might have been enough but at that time I preferred to take risks so I told him to go.
"When you take a risk and you concede a goal the following day you can say that it was because you took a risk. But the problem with not taking a risk is that you will never know what would have happened if you did.
"It will be difficult now because Bournemouth have two more games and one win will be no problem.
"But our aim was to get into the play-offs. We wanted the play-offs two or three weeks ago."
Fulham had successfully avoided the prospect of relegation a few days earlier and took the lead in first half stoppage time through Michael Turner's corner.
That lead was doubled when McCormack was fouled in the box by Daniel Ayala and the Scot despatched the penalty himself.
Karanka responded by making a triple substitution and Adam Reach, one of the replacements, immediately pulled one back, only for George Friend to concede another penalty, fouling Hugo Rodallega, and be sent off.
McCormack converted again but Ayala's header made it 3-2 and another substitute, Kike, levelled with just a minute remaining to set up a grandstand finish that was eventually settled in Fulham's favour by McCormack.
"The pressure was off us as a football club but that was a pressure situation," said Fulham manager Kit Symons. "But that's something that Ross thrives on - he loves that and was probably the calmest man in the Cottage."
Symons added: "It was a proper roller-coaster of a game. We actually played very well.
"It was a good performance, which I wanted to give to the fans as although that makes it five unbeaten, in recent games here it hasn't been pretty.
"It has been scrappy and ugly and we have had to play a different way and forgo certain elements of my footballing principles to make sure of the results we needed."
