Fulham 6 QPR 0: Warnock suffers miserable time as Johnson leads Fulham to win

Andrew Johnson’s hat-trick spurred the Cottagers to their first Premier League victory of the season. Danny Murphy’s penalty along with efforts from Clint Dempsey and Bobby Zamora complemented Johnson’s treble.

Warnock’s miserable afternoon was compounded further by suggestions that playmaker Taarabt stormed out of Craven Cottage after being substituted.

Asked about the situation, he said: “That’s not my problem at the moment. I have no idea (whether he left the dressing room). I’ve more worries than any individual when you lose 6-0.

“I don’t think you can blame Adel Taarabt today. We conceded six goals. You’ve got to look at that.

“If I’m honest, if we had Darren Bent playing for us today, and a few England players, we’d have still been beaten 6-0.

“I don’t think you can get carried away too much. You get days when Adel comes off. You’re going to get days when he throws his toys out the pram, but that isn’t a worry for me.

“If I sub somebody and they are happy, then I have more of a problem with that.”

Asked again whether he knew if Taarabt was at the stadium for the second half, Warnock retorted: “I’m not concerned about that.

“You can make whatever you want from the situation.”

After being asked once more about Taarabt, Warnock walked out the post-match press conference.

By coincidence, Taarabt was recalled to the Morocco squad earlier yesterday three months after walking out on the team and vowing never to play international football again.

While the Hoops endured a difficult day against their near neighbours, Fulham manager Martin Jol was delighted with his team’s performance.

“We took the initiative,” he said. “Sometimes you need to let them play to get more space for our four attacking players and we did well in that respect.

“We played 4-4-2 today with two wide players who could come in. That caused them a problem with the full-backs overlapping as well, especially John Arne Riise.

“But don’t forget that we’ve done that before. It’s not the first time – I’ve been here for four months. The only thing we did differently was Moussa Dembele played instead of Damien Duff and he’s a very gifted player.”