Alvaro Arbeloa exclusive: Fulham head coach on early mistakes, seeing out games and getting the best from Gonzalo Garcia

It is still early days in the Alvaro Arbeloa project at Fulham but the optimism a narrow but entertaining opening-weekend 3-2 defeat to Chelsea had brought from his debut in the dugout had quickly waned with such a poor run which had left them stranded bottom of the Premier League.

That openness which initially seemed a welcome tonic from the sometimes pragmatic Marco Silva era had quickly become the problem, with the Cottagers losing 3-2 again - this time to previously winless Crystal Palace - and shipping two late goals to Ipswich earlier this month to lose at Portman Road too.

Something had to change, and after six league games with his players Arbeloa felt he had seen enough to know where to start.

"We have been learning from our mistakes, and obviously we are a team in a process," he tells Sky Sports . "We are improving, we're working hard and for us to be a very solid team is so important.

"We're not the best team in open games, we're much better controlling the ball, the transitions. We're a much better team in this way.

"Of course, I have to adapt to my players - they are the most important thing. It's not just about my ideas, it's about them and their qualities, their talent.

"You can only control what you can control. That's what you want to do. We cannot control what our opponents want to do but we have been learning and improving, working on our mistakes.

"We can be aggressive when we press, but sometimes you need to drop into a low block or a medium block. There are moments for everything in a game. At the end of the day, we have to be a complete team.

"In every process there are some ups and downs. That's normal, but we're on the right track."

Conceding an average of 1.69xG a game was never going to be sustainable. Building from the back has seen Fulham let just 0.67xG go combined across their last two matches, a drop of almost 80 per cent.

Those 1-0 wins against Coventry and Hull have, inevitably, been less entertaining as the early matches - but entertainment doesn't go far when you keep losing.

It has created another problem too. Now record summer signing Gonzalo Garcia, who Arbeloa labelled one of the best strikers in world football upon his arrival, has found life increasingly tough going and at times been left isolated up front.

No-one can fault the 22-year-old's efforts. He has made the second-most off-the-ball runs, and attacking runs, of anyone in the Premier League this season.

But despite showing flashes, he has not scored a league goal since a promising opening-weekend debut against Chelsea.

"We can give him better service, especially from wide areas," says Arbeloa. "We need to look for him when he runs. He has the pace, he has the power.

"As a team we can do better in the final third. It's something we're working hard on.

"But at the end of the day he has to do many things well, and I think goals will come. For me, it's important as a manager that the strikers do their work for the team, and the goals are their reward."

Fulham fans are just as eager to see more potency from their side but a desire to see out games better is a bigger bugbear.

The Cottagers have conceded a league-high five goals in the final 20 minutes of matches and dropped five points in that period - second only to Bournemouth.

Despite his Premier League experience as a player, in the dugout Arbeloa is still coming to terms with the intensity of those crunch periods in games compared to his brief experience in LaLiga last season.

He said: "It's more physical here, more direct, especially in the last 15-20 minutes of games when it's less controlled.

"They're more open games, and you have to be ready for those moments where the game is more open."

If Fulham ever had to be ready, a trip to face Aston Villa - led by a manager Arbeloa says he considers among the best in the world - now is that time.

After two wins against newly-promoted teams, this will be as big a test as any of just how much learning has been done from that tough start if better times are to follow.

Watch Aston Villa vs Fulham from 8pm on Saturday live on Sky Sports Premier League , kick-off 7.45pm.