IT might pain him to say it today but Sam Allardyce did warn us. He did not anticipate a four-goal thrashing in the opening fixture, of course, but he did make a number of telling points in the days leading up to Saturday's Premiership opener:

Having Youri Djorkaeff and Jay Jay Okcocha did not guarantee success.

He is still two players short - an experienced defender and a reliable striker.

Fulham would hit the ground running after playing in the Intertoto Cup.

He was proved right on all counts and today he set about repairing the damage of a defeat that, truth be told, did not come as all that much of shock.

A year ago Allardyce was doing everything in his power to keep everyone's feet on the ground after Wanderers got off to that five-goal flyer at Leicester. Now he has to pick his players up from the bitter disappointment of their first day thrashing at Fulham.

None of which are easy jobs but, given the choice ... we all know which he would prefer.

Suddenly, as he admits himself, the pressure on his players has intensified.

More worrying still is that, since the only redeeming feature he could come up with on Saturday night was the fact that Fulham's seven Intertoto Cup games had given them a distinct advantage, Big Sam himself is under pressure.

Nothing new there, of course. The Reebok boss knows the score and has shown he can take the strain but it does not augur well that, after having had the benefit of an early lead, Wanderers committed defensive suicide, failed miserably to match Fulham in midfield and - apart from Michael Ricketts' flamboyantly-executed penalty - did not once trouble home keeper Edwin Van Ser Saar.

And although the season is just 90 minutes old, he would rather not be having to hand out warnings to two of his new signings that, if they don't buck up their ideas, they will soon be out of the team. Allardyce tells it like it is and neither Okocha nor Bernard Mendy can contradict the manager after their baptisms of fire at Loftus Road.

They are in the tough world of the Premiership now and, however big a player's reputation, if he can't cut it, he's out!

Okocha - the Nigerian captain and veteran of three World Cups in a nine-year international career and a £10 million player when he moved from Fenerbache to Paris St Germain - was warned it might take time to adjust. But he did not expect to be hauled off after just 45 minutes against one of the lesser teams in the English top flight.

Mendy is no international star but is highly-regarded at PSG, where he has played enough first team football to command a £5m valuation. Yet Allardyce saw him struggling to keep up so decided to take him off before he was sent off.

At 3-1 down, the damage was done and, although Wanderers made a better fist of it in the second half with Mike Whitlow helping tighten things up and Henrik Pedersen putting some life into the attack, the home fans still managed to have the last laugh with Sylvain Legwinski - the game's most outstanding performer - rifling in his second and Fulham's fourth.

"It's just the overall pace of the Premiership," Allardyce said, explaining why it was no surprise to him that Okocha and Mendy struggled. "The strength, the pace, the athleticism, the quality and the skill has to be produced much quicker than anywhere else in any league.

"You have to be more skilful because you have to produce that skill in a short space of time. When you haven't played at that level before it takes some getting used to.

"Once they get there, Bernard and Jay Jay will be major assets but I think they will have had a harsh lesson, the pair of them.

"We've seen it before with Bergkamp when he first came and Henry ... all these players have struggled in the early part and come to be major influences.

"Youri Djorkaeff has got to the pace of the Premiership. Now Jay Jay and Bernard have got to learn as Youri did."

Indeed, Djorkaeff made his presence felt to good effect when he played a one-two with the otherwise subdued Ricardo Gardner and turned Alain Goma smartly just inside the box to win the fourth minute penalty Michael Ricketts converted to give Wanderers a dream lead. But for all his flashes of skill and his attempts to inspire and encourage, he was repeatedly frustrated - often as much by his team-mates as his opponents.

For the second year running, Wanderers had the distinction of scoring the first goal of the new Premiership season. But there was nothing else to cheer the 2,500 fans who went home with good reason to feel they had been short-changed.

Jean Tigana's fast-breaking side had already looked threatening before Gudni Bergsson gifted Fulham the equaliser on 10 minutes when he brought down Louis Saha with a rash tackle for the first of two penalties that got Allardyce's blood boiling.

Saha converted that one and Steve Marlet stepped up for the second in the 38th minute after Mendy, who'd looked desperately inadequate and short of assistance against the left-wing threat of Rufus Brevett and Luis Boa Morte, brought down the Portuguese attacker with an even more reckless challenge.

In between Sylvain Legwinski danced round Bruno N'Gotty to round off some neat inter-play with Sean Davis and that was it, game set and match to the Londoners.

The second half was largely academic, although Djorkjaeff offered the odd ray of hope while Pedersen, who has worked hard to re-establish himself after his injury problems last season, managed to ruffle a few Fulham feathers.

"Personally, almost everything I did was successful," the determined Dane acknowledged, "but, of course, the result wasn't the result we wanted so I can't be happy.

"Everybody's disappointed. We had a good pre-season and were looking for a good result. We had that great start and we thought it would be a good day but unfortunately they got the first penalty and afterwards ... the game was not a good one for us.'

Allardyce had no complaints with either of the penalty decisions against his defenders, just with the players themselves and Bergsson, so outstanding in recent seasons, confessed: "As defenders, if you are going for a tackle in the box, you have to make sure you get the ball and we didn't. It was bad defending, bad tackling.

"We didn't make it easy for ourselves with sloppy defending.

"This puts pressure on the players straight away," Allardyce added.

"Is it going to be a one-season wonder? All that stuff will start immediately because we've lost 4-1. But we've got to shut that out. We know what we can do but, unfortunately, on Saturday we didn't get anywhere near our best, which you have to be all the time in the Premiership.

"It's a harsh lesson for us and I hope we have learned from it."