George Burley praised his team after the 1-0 win against Fulham at Portman Road yesterday evening. The Town boss said he had aimed to close down Jean Tigana's side as quickly as he could.

Burley said: "We knew Fulham are a very good passing team and we had to match them, close them down quickly, try to stop them playing and then play off them. They had quite a bit of the ball but never created a clear chance while we had four or five very good ones. I'm very pleased to get the three points to keep up our progress up the League. So many teams are fighting to stay in the Premiership and we are one of them, and we showed those qualities tonight. It's about desire to win games and we had plenty of that."

Marcus Bent was again on target, although there have been suggestions that the ball might have been over the ine already: "He is scoring plenty of goals for us but knows he has a lot of areas in which he can still improve. With Marcus, Alun Armstrong and Marcus Stewart we have three top-class strikers and that allows us to rotate. From the dug-out it looked as if he put it in, but I'm not bothered whether it was one of their players or one of ours who put it in, as long as someone did."

Burley took off Alun Armstrong and Jermaine Wright, both of whome are now doubts for the trip to Everton at the weekend. Armstrong has an twisted ankle while Wright's groin injury, suffered in the Manchester City game, tightened by the end.

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