Fulham manager Roy Hodgson today spelt out the task facing his side if they are to avoid another fight against relegation. During the second half of yesterday's tense finale at Portsmouth, Hodgson admitted he was so close to accepting Fulham were going down he began to piece together an explanation for why his side would be playing in the Championship next season.

But then Danny Murphy rose magnificently to head home Jimmy Bullard's 76th-minute free-kick and a 1-0 win over the FA Cup finalists was enough to keep Fulham one place above the drop zone.

Hodgson said: "We'll enjoy this result for a couple of days. But then we've got to get our feet back on the ground and start making certain that next season we've got a stronger platform so that we don't find ourselves from the outset fighting to get out of the bottom three. A lot of hard work needs to be done in the summer to make sure that platform is built."

Hodgson, a 60-year-old with a wealth of experience in European club and international football, is usually calm personified as he watches from the technical area. But he became visibly concerned at Fratton Park as the organisation and passing game which he hoped would keep Fulham up for an eighth successive season began to fall prey to nerves.

Goals elsewhere meant there was a period when Fulham had fallen back into the bottom three and Hodgson said: "It was tough, especially as we knew Reading were winning so comfortably at Derby and we also knew at half-time that Birmingham were leading. I thought it was very important to keep playing the right way. But I was worried that we were going to start going gung-ho.

"We knew we had to win and I was worried that suddenly we would start to try to do things individually, we were going to start flying forward, and certainly a couple of long shots in the second half didn't please me too much. But I always had that thought that if we made certain they didn't score, and we kept ourselves in the game, in the last 15-20 minutes something would come our way.

"In that respect I suppose I did stay fairly calm, but I certainly wasn't calm after we went 1-0 up. If that game could have stopped immediately

Danny's header went in I would have been the happiest man in the world." Four wins from the last five games were the product of Hodgson's determination to get his team playing football worthy of the Premier League.

He always remained outwardly confident that the right results would come, but in the wake of yesterday's confirmation of survival Hodgson finally let on there were times he feared the worst.

He said: "I'm realistic. I've been in the game a long time and you don't dream, you face reality and I think our reality four or five games ago was we were facing life in the Championship. Luckily we didn't give up, the boys kept the faith and I think we did it by playing football and we did it by getting results we deserved rather than results we'd stolen or sneaked.

"I think in the last couple of months we've actually become a better team because the players have worked so hard. We've been very consistent in the work we've done trying to improve our defending and improve our attacking."

Murphy led the praise for what Hodgson has achieved. He said: "For weeks now we've not played like a team that's in the relegation zone. We've played like a team that's a lot higher than that.

"The style of football we've played has been excellent considering the pressure we've been under and the manager deserves credit for that."

Murphy nearly missed the match because his 18-month-old daughter Mya had been admitted to hospital.

The midfielder said: "It's about priorities. On Saturday morning my little girl got taken to hospital and it was 50-50 whether I was going to play.

"It was one of those things, she had a bit of a bug and got dehydrated. But by Saturday evening she was a lot better so I came down with the boys and scored the winner. Sometimes these things are written in the stars."