O'Neill: I was wrong to berate ref

O'Neill was given his marching orders after striding on to the pitch at half-time to remonstrate with Bennett.

O'Neill said: "The referee was right. I shouldn't be publicly remonstrating with him coming off the field. I should have waited until we got to the privacy of the dressing room. I thought - probably wrongly now - that a Fulham player was down injured for the two minutes extra added on at the end of the first half."

He added: "The referee told me at half-time that he had played two and a half minutes. I apologise to him. I should not have remonstrated like I did. It was different watching the game from up above - but it would have been an injustice if we had not have won. We were exhilarating going forward and the crowd stayed with us to the very end."

O'Neill admitted he had required a club steward to relay the message to the dug out to bring on Maloney for the final seven minutes. And the former Celtic forward repaid him by slotting home the winner from a sliderule pass from the ever dangerous Ashley Young.

O'Neill said: "There are these new sort of phones I am incapable of using so I got the steward sat next to me to send down the message to put Maloney on. I thought the game had gone on too late for us to score but it was a great ball from Ashley and, knowing Shaun from his Celtic days, I was confident he would finish.

"I thought Ashley was sensational. When he is in that type of form we always look capable of scoring."

Fulham manager Lawrie Sanchez was unsurprisingly unhappy with referee Bennett for not awarding a first-half spot-kick after Craig Gardner appeared to handle in the area. It followed on from last week when David Healy had a goal disallowed against Middlesbrough when replays showed the ball had crossed the line.

Sanchez said: "It was another major error by a referee. Yet again we have been on the receiving end of such a decision. I am very disappointed. If we had been given a penalty when 1-0, there might have been a different outcome. Gardner handled only three yards out and, had we scored the penalty, I am sure we could have held a 2-0 lead.

"We also had no luck at the other end but we also have to look at the fact that we have led three times this season and lost every game. We need to rectify that situation. It was poor defending for the winner in injury time."