When the gaffer started with a back five, I was in two minds.
It would’ve been good to be solid at the back away from home, but with Fulham being strong at home, that might’ve meant we were less present
in the middle of the park — and that was how it panned out for the majority of the match.
We came out of the blocks well with a great press and a couple of half chances created.
Bertrand Traoré looked very lively in what was maybe his best showing since joining the club, and he looked likely to contribute. However, Fulham quickly swung their focus to the right side of our defence, with good movement and over-loading, and we were lucky not to go behind on a few occasions.
If Harry Wilson — a quality player, in my view — had put his shot a yard inside the post around the 22nd minute, that would’ve opened the scoring and arguably deservedly so. If he’d passed, they would’ve had an even better chance, but they failed to convert.
On half an hour, I looked at the clock and was happy we weren’t already behind whilst also hoping we could make it to the half time whistle without letting anything breach us.
We managed to achieve that despite other half-chances for the hosts, but we also had a couple of sniffs of goal, with our first proper shot on target from the aforementioned Traoré on the 39th minute. Some good play lead to a nice through ball for Enzo Le Fée just before half time, but that was half a yard too deep and we again failed to grab a chance.
We went in at 0-0, which felt like a OK place to be as we hadn’t played as well as we can by a long way — even away from home.
The referee came into the game more in the second half, and not in a good way. As early as the 49th minute, we had a great chance to break away but the referee was somehow conned into stopping play for a potential head injury, when Raúl Jiménez simply headed a ball under pressure and went down in a way that he really should’ve been penalised for.
The game went to and fro up to and around the hour mark and I felt happy that we seemed to establish a spell of momentum around that period. However, for a change, the introductions of Brian Brobbey and Chemsdine Talbi in the 63rd minute seemed to nullify that rather than add to it.
After a great run from Noah Sadiki which didn’t find a fellow black shirt, Wilson went close yet again for the hosts, putting a shot wide of Robin Roefs’ left post when he should probably have done way better.
Emil Smith Rowe came on for Fulham and also put one narrowly wide midway through the second half. While we still did our best to compete, we were wasteful in possession at times which was very frustrating, as when we didn’t mess up possession, the officials seemed to take it from us with some very tenuous calls.
Officials aside, when chances came to break and counter, we messed them up more often than we generally have. It just didn’t feel like it was going to be our day and when Le Fée was in acres of space with about ten minutes to go, his teammates failed to find him and moments later we were made to pay.
Fulham’s subs quelled our uprising quite well and when Samuel Chukwueze cut a decent cross into the box from wide on the left, Roefs seemed to decide to come and then decide not to — which was partly due to the quality of the ball rather than a goalkeeping error.
Jimenez had wrestled with Dan Ballard all day (with the big Northern Irishman prevailing a lot of the time), but on this occasion, the Mexican striker managed to get a toe on the ball to guide it past Roefs for the hosts to take the lead in the 84th minute.
While we scrapped and battled for the remaining six minutes plus the five added on, we failed to find one of our usual late goals and were arguably lucky to not let in a second, with a clearance off the line on 87 minutes and other chances for the Cottagers being wasted.
Smith-Rowe and Lutsharel Geertruida had an entertaining “air shot” competition late on, when they both should’ve done better and at least tested goalkeepers and their defenders. Come the final whistle though, we were a goal down and had to accept that we hadn’t quite been at the races in London.
After such a cracking start to our Premier League campaign, we were always going to have the odd day which wasn’t our best, and this was one of them for both the team and the coach.
The referee was incredibly inconsistent but the Lads clearly suffered from losing some of the momentum they’d gathered with that great draw at home to the Gunners, and when even our much-lauded coaching team seem to have a bad day at the office, you maybe have to accept that our morning toast isn’t always falling jam side up.
Most of the time, our substitutions tend to change the game in our favour but this time they seemed to add very little and may well have degraded our chances of getting a share of the points. The lack of a change of shape with the injection of subs was odd too — the formation had seen us on the back foot more often than not across the hour before the changes, but we changed personnel and not shape.
From the start of the game, the decision to play with a back five removed the ability for Granit Xhaka to boss the midfield with enough support around him to make that work, and in failing to amend that setup — either when we made changes or when we went behind — we maybe reduced our chances of getting anything from the match.
That said, we’re still in a great position and we are going to lose games like this to sides with good home form, much as other good teams will struggle to get anything at our place.
We move on to Bournemouth at home; to get back on that horse and get the points ticking over again.
We’re new at this level and have done incredibly well. We’ll experience blips and we need to make this narrow defeat one of those — not the start of something more.
