Fulham's rapid start reaps the rewards at Spurs
Sammy breaks down our win at Spurs in over a decade
What a weekend that was for Fulham. A first away win of the season and a first victory at Tottenham in a dozen years. Tete’s deflection and Wilson’s stunner from the touchline gave the Whites a 6 minute lead both the home and travelling fans in the stadium could scarcely believe. Some way for Marco to mark game 200 of his Fulham career.
It was absolutely surreal to see Fulham race into a lead in that fashion. From the shallow away end, it was hard to work out exactly how Harry Wilson had managed to score from the sideline - an outrageous bit of skill and vision from our Welsh wizard. Obviously, it’s a howler from Vicario, but I still can’t quite work out why none of the Spurs defenders cover the completely empty net.
And let’s be honest, we should really have been three or four ahead. We were ripping Spurs open time after time, and the brilliant Samu Chukwueze should have added a goal or two to his already scintillating performance.
The joy of Fulham’s opening half hour soon turned to the fear of us somehow blowing it. The wave of Spurs attacks felt relentless and Fulham, particularly at the start of the second half, struggled to contain them. Eventually, a poor clearance from Wilson led to Mohamed Kudus getting the space to bring it back to 2-1. From there, I feared that we could be on the end of yet another away day collapse.
Marco’s subs of Lukic and Smith Rowe probably should have come earlier, but the duo were definitely a case of better late than never. They each added some much needed solidity into the midfield, and helped quell the endless Spurs onslaught.
We got away with a couple of close shaves, particularly Bergvall’s header from a corner which was cleared off brilliantly the line by Jimenez, but there’s no doubting that all of the subs played their part in getting the result across the line.
After the match, myself and Dan took on the Quick Take, and we were a mixture of giddy and relieved. Nothing better than recording these after a big win on the road.
The 3 points moved Fulham up the table from 15th to 15th, a little bit of an underwhelming result for such a brilliant win. However, points-wise Fulham are right back in the thick of the mid-table battle, just a point or two off some of this season’s darling teams who many would say have had “good” starts to the season.
In Owen McDonald’s column, he waxed lyrical about many of the individual performances, and also pondered whether we could be finding form at just the right time ahead of a busy month of fixtures. He even dares to dream at the end, wondering about whether we could possibly break our horrific Manchester City run.
Then in the player ratings, George was a tough task-master with some of his scores, but Joachim Andersen won his MOTM, which actually is an under-rated shout. Chukwueze, Tete and Wilson have taken many of the plaudits, but the Dane was magnificent on Saturday, and made some crucial blocks that helped protect the three points.
Podcast is out on Monday morning if you want to re-live the fun one more time. UTF.