Recap: Bassey's blunders compound Fulham's miserable month

Sammy looks back at Fulham's defeat in the North-East

Image licenced via IMAGO - Copyright: Richard Lee

Ah Fulham do know how to ruin a weekend. A valiant point against Newcastle chucked away in stoppage time following a careless pass to Ryan Sessegnon by Calvin Bassey.

Nobody could deny that the magpies were value for their victory, but sometimes it’s nice to scrape a point in adversity. Fulham’s equaliser was just reward for dragging their way back into the match, Newcastle’s winner was the consequence of ceding that control.

Whilst Marco’s half-time substitute bringing on Kevin and moving Iwobi centrally worked wonders, his other subs, bringing on Tom Cairney and Josh King were so ineffective they were actually detrimental.

A see-saw game became a one-way barrage and Bruno’s goal was fully deserved. Bassey may have been culpable for the goal, but the team and Marco must shoulder the responsibility for the direction of the match.

After the weekend’s results, we are down in 17th place and all of a sudden our promising start is looking bleak. Four defeats in a row is never pretty, and trailing all three promoted clubs in the league is not where any of us hoped to be at the end of October.

The fact that the teams who came up are more competitive is great for the neutral, but not for a team like Fulham. Burnley and Leeds will still be in the mix to go down, but you’d imagine that Sunderland’s fast start will keep them at an arm’s length from the mess at the bottom. The hope has to be that the respective crises at Wolves, West Ham and Forest continue indefinitely.

However, I do still believe that our results have tracked exactly what you’d expect on paper. Three tough away games sandwiched around a home game against the league leaders. Liverpool are proof that any team can lose four in a row at this level.

After nine games last season, the team 17th in the table were an injury-hit Crystal Palace. Their season turned out ok in the end.

So no, it’s not a crisis by any stretch of the imagination. However, a crisis is right around the corner. This comment from Sam in the Fulhamish Telegram sums up the situation we find ourselves in ahead of (winless) Wolves next week. Lose that, and I think we can start to panic.

After yesterday’s game I took on the Quick Take, normally we like to record these from the game, but the lack of trains meant this one was done from home. I tried my best to mix the emotion of the painful defeat with the fact that there’s no need to sound the alarm just yet.

Elsewhere, Owen Macdonald described the next two matches as “must-wins” and it’s hard to disagree. Whilst I’m sure we’d all probably reluctantly trade our place in the Carabao Cup for a win against Wolves, we really have to win both.

A victory against Wycombe on Tuesday will not only put us in the quarter-finals of a major competition, but hopefully it’ll restore a winning feeling to a side that must be feeling like little has gone their way of late.

Then in the Player Ratings, George annointed Raul Jimenez his Fulham MOTM. It was a strong performance from the Mexican, who continues to defy his years with his strength and intelligence.

It’s very clear though that he just hasn’t got 90 minutes in him and Marco spoke after the game how he would have loved to have Muniz on the bench on Saturday in order to switch things up up front.

Later on today, we’ll have a podcast dissecting the defeat but no doubt we’ll also spend a good chunk of it looking ahead to Tuesday’s match at Adams Park. I’m personally very excited to tick off another of the 92 - a Carabao treat would be the perfect way to lift spirits after a tough October.