We suffered a London derby defeat on Saturday evening as we couldn’t recover from conceding two goals in the opening six minutes to Fulham.
A spirited second half saw Mohammed Kudus reduce the deficit with his first home goal in our colours just before the hour mark and we created chances to draw level but couldn’t convert them, ultimately going down to our fourth home league defeat in seven games in N17 this season.
We made four changes from the midweek Champions League outing against PSG, with Kevin Danso coming in for the suspended Cristian Romero, Destiny Udogie replacing Djed Spence, Joao Palhinha in for Rodrigo Bentancur against his old club and Kudus replacing Pape Matar Sarr.
After the positive performance in the French capital, hopes were high of picking up a positive result against a Fulham side that hadn’t won away from home in the league this term. But that optimism faded quickly as we found ourselves two goals behind in six minutes, the quickest we had ever fallen 2-0 down in Premier League history. There was certainly some misfortune about Fulham’s first goal after four minutes, with Samuel Chukwueze miscuing his intended pass to the edge of the area to Kenny Tete and yet it wrong-footed Lucas Bergvall and still found his man, with Tete’s right-footed strike clipping the inside of Udogie’s leg and sneaking into the bottom corner.
That was a setback, but we suffered even worse two minutes later. Guglielmo Vicario beat Raul Jimenez to a long ball over the top, tried to play forwards when clearing into touch probably would have been the better option, but found Josh King with his clearance. He popped the ball wide to Harry Wilson some 35 yards out by the touchline and he produced an excellent first-time effort which bounced into the empty net.
We tried to respond quickly and went close when Joachim Andersen almost diverted Kudus’ cross into his own net before Archie Gray dragged a shot wide however, had it not been for Micky van de Ven, it would have been 3-0. With 26 minutes gone, Chukwueze nicked the ball off Pedro Porro and was in on goal, rounded Vicario and was about to roll the ball home when our skipper on the night slid in with a superb tackle to deny him.
The remainder of the half saw us dominate possession as we searched for a way back into the game, plenty of crosses coming into the box – mostly from the right flank – but we didn’t really work Fulham goalkeeper Bernd Leno, with van de Ven firing high over the bar the closest we came.
We needed a fast start in the second half and almost got it when Pedro Porro’s cross landed nicely for Randal Kolo Muani but his effort from 10 yards out was blocked by Calvin Bassey, before the French forward sent a glancing header from another Porro centre into the side-netting. It was all us at this stage and we got the goal we needed in the 59th minute with a rocket from Kudus. Bergvall lifted a lovely ball in to him in the inside right position and Kudus lashed a rising right-footed shot past Leno at his near post.
That changed the whole mood of the game and the stadium and we almost scored a second with two chances in quick succession. First, Andersen made a diving block to prevent Xavi Simons’ 12-yard shot from finding the bottom corner and, from the set-piece, Bergvall’s glancing near-post header was going in until Jimenez headed off the line at the far post.
A Kevin Danso long throw almost led to an equaliser with 10 minutes remaining, Udogie with the blocked shot before Kolo Muani stole the ball off Tete and then sent a back-heel just past the post. But for all our possession in the second half, Fulham still carried a threat and Vicario had to save low down after Kevin’s effort flicked off Danso on its way through. We tried to apply pressure in the closing stages but, in truth, couldn’t really build up a head of steam and the visitors were able to deal with our attacking threats as we suffered another disappointment on home soil.