Fulham lack ruthless touch as Manchester United deliver familiar sucker punch at Craven Cottage
Fulham lack ruthless touch as Manchester United deliver familiar sucker punch at Craven Cottage
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So many times already this season, Marco Silva has bemoaned his side’s propensity to let utterly dominant performances count for nothing. Manchester United were the latest beneficiaries. Every Fulham player, member of staff and supporter will have left Craven Cottage late on Sunday evening wondering quite how the Cottagers had carved out a way to lose this match.
The game's only goal — Fulham’s head-drop moment — was just the sort of good fortune United were going to need. They had been woeful, and Fulham had made them look such. Lisandro Martinez’s speculative strike from range took a wicked nick off Sasa Lukic’s foot and looped cruelly over Bernd Leno and in.
Fulham stay 10th and are still four points above the ailing Red Devils, but this was a result that will stay with Silva and his players all week and probably longer. For all their snappy passing and penetration into the final third, they sorely lacked that final punch and were made to pay.
Clips of Silva’s pre-match press conference were doing the rounds online ahead of this game. The Fulham manager could be seen robustly and repeatedly taking one broadcast journalist to task for framing every question about Fulham’s successful season in relation to United’s own travails.
Silva is well known to feel his side do not get the credit they deserve (he’s right). His remit and his concern, he argued, is Fulham. Not United. It is almost guaranteed with a ticket to Craven Cottage these days that Fulham supporters will be treated to a positive, slick performance from their side. Positive results are not always such reliable currency, however, and to taste defeat courtesy of their visitors’ one and only shot on target all evening will have left a decidedly bitter taste in the mouth.
