Fulham boss Martin Jol hailed his players after their amazing 5-2 win over Newcastle United.

Having managed just one shot in an appalling first half performance, Fulham deservedly fell behind to a superb Danny Guthrie long-range drive as half-time approached.

However, Jol's half-time pep talk and tactical tweak proved inspired as the west Londoners scored four goals in a 16-minute period.

Danny Murphy and Bobby Zamora netted penalties either side of a Clint Dempsey brace as Fulham ran the Magpies ragged, with American international Dempsey having the final word by firing home his third at the end of the 5-2 victory.

"You can explain everything," Jol said. "The first half we knew that we had to be a threat in behind [Mike] Williamson and [Fabricio] Coloccini, but we never did that.

"We couldn't exploit our extra man in midfield and in the second half it was different because we decided to play a more direct style. That caused them more problems. It was 1-0 and we knew we had come back from that before. The score was not the problem, the style of play was more of a problem. We just didn't put enough energy into it. Of course with the runners from midfield and bringing on Andrew Johnson we got that [in the second period] and that is exactly what you saw.

"Having said that, we wanted to do that with Damien Duff, Clint and Bobby Zamora but we couldn't keep the ball. If we played it up to Bobby we couldn't get the runners in behind and with Andrew Johnson he solved that problem. I wanted to change things at half-time but of course we had (Steve) Sidwell going off [injured just before the break].

"That probably meant we didn't look balanced enough in midfield [so I brought on Chris Baird at half-time].

"The first half was sort of Brixton, the second half was a holiday in Jamaica. It was an unbelievable difference."