Smith Rowe and Bassey cook up Fulham victory as Nottingham Forest stumble

Wait long enough in football and you will eventually see almost everything. Calvin Bassey is a defenders’ defender. He stops opponents scoring. He is quick and good in the air. He is very good at looking authoritative when holding his arms out to craft the offside line. He is not a habitual goalscorer. But, a year less a week since his only other strike for Fulham, the 25-year-old headed his first goal at Craven Cottage and so Nottingham Forest joined the short list of Falkirk, Volendam and Manchester United as teams he has scored against.

At least until the 1987 League Cup final, when Charlie Nicholas ruined the factoid, commentators loved to point out that when Ian Rush scored, Liverpool never lost. Bassey is even better than that: whenever he has scored, whether it’s in the Eredivisie or the Scottish League Cup, his side has won. Which, on Saturday, felt only right. They were much the better side for long periods and that Forest had somehow gone in level at half-time felt an aberration.

Good as Fulham’s season has been, there’s been a sense that it has been very close to being even better. They’ve now done the double over Forest and Newcastle. They’ve beaten Chelsea. They’ve led against Manchester City, Aston Villa, Arsenal and Liverpool without finishing the job. Their record against the lower half of the table, though, is less impressive. They only drew at home against Southampton and, inexplicably, they’ve lost twice to Manchester United.

Qualification for the Europa Conference League is still possible but with greater ruthlessness Fulham could easily have had the extra five or six points that would have put them on the fringes of the battle for the Champions League spots. Which makes this campaign very hard to assess: simultaneously far better than anybody expected and yet also, to an extent, a missed opportunity. Even on Saturday there was a sense they made rather harder work of beating Forest than the balance of play suggested they ought to have done.

Raúl Jiménez had already gone close with one header from a right-wing Adama Traoré cross when, on 15 minutes, he swung a ball in towards the back post for Emile Smith Rowe to nod in from close range. The back three may have worked for Forest as they hammered Brighton in their previous league game, but here it was notable how often before half-time Traoré was able to isolate Neco Williams and run at him.

Forest had been under intense pressure and could easily have been two or three behind when, without warning, they levelled. Their only vague chance had been an unconvincing Williams shot dragged into the side-netting but, eight minutes before the break, a speculative forward pass from Morgan Gibbs-White struck Chris Wood on the heel. He showed great strength to shrug off Bassey and Antonee Robinson to get to the loose ball, and even great composure then to sidefoot his shot into the bottom corner from the edge of the box. All logic says that his golden streak must end soon – this was his 18th Premier League goal this season from 46 shots, which is to say a goal every 2.56 shots when one in nine would be considered standard – and yet it goes on and on.

Sign up to Football Daily. Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football. after newsletter promotion. All logic also said that Fulham should be winning. Matz Sels made fine saves from Jiménez and Sasa Lukic and for a time it seemed that this might be another of those games in which Fulham went home wondering how they’d failed to take the three points. But then, just after the hour, came Bassey’s moment. Jiménez flicked on Lukic’s corner and Bassey stole off the back of Wood to plant his header back across goal and into the top corner. A rare sight and, for Fulham, a very welcome one.