VAR strikes twice to fell Fulham at Stamford Bridge

Chelsea's 2-0 victory required seriously fortuitous officiating in a competitive game this afternoon.

There is never a good time to lose to Chelsea - though Fulham have done it a lot in the modern era, every defeat to our rivals is a sore one. In the context of Marco Silva’s management of the team, our growth and recent competitiveness with the league’s stronger sides - not least today’s opponents - this result is a particularly horrible one, replete with officiating failures and refereeing inconsistencies. Chelsea’s 2-0 win leaves me with a feeling of anger over disappointment - it feels a cheap way to lose our first game of the campaign.

First Half

We started the game similarly to the Manchester United game, with Sessegnon and Castagne at wingback and Tete tucked into a third centre-back slot alongside Bassey and Andersen. It’s not too surprising - Chelsea were stacked with pace and eager to press early on into the game. The first chances were unsurprisingly theirs. Leno being forced into a rushed kick by Enzo led to a Chelsea move in an unadvantageous position for us, but the scent of goal prompted a scuffed long shot that was easily saved. Cucurella combined with Neto on the left, pinning Castagne and opening an avenue for Delap to prowl into the box, but his shot was also rough and Berge was able to block the effort.

Early tidings made the game certainly seem one Chelsea to take initiative in, but Silva’s tactics looked to have given Fulham an edge in the game. Liam Delap’s injury meant Tyrique George had to replace him - a nippy forward, but not a physical striker. Fulham’s centre-backs had a little of the pressure relieved on them, using their greater mass to bolster the box and keep Chelsea away from easy chances. Berge turned enforcer, sitting just in front of the backline to cut Joao Pedro’s access to the other forwards. With Castagne playing at full attentiveness, Chelsea’s route into the final third dried up, turning to wayward longballs and hopeful runs from Estevao.

Chelsea having so many attackers made our counter-attacks, and subsequent advance into Chelsea territory, more fruitful. King, enjoying his run in the team, took to the conditions brilliantly, attuned to the retrievals Berge made, linking passes with his teammates nicely to carry the ball forward and taking Fulham into the box. We shifted the game, pouncing on Chelsea’s sterile possession and testing the nerves of Chelsea’s backline. 20 minutes in, we had our reward - George ran into our defensive wall and had the ball taken from him by Castagne, moving the ball forward to Muniz, who acrobatically turned Chalobah with the ball. Cucurella, surging out of position, knocked it away from him - straight to Berge, aware enough to spot King running through a disintegrating Chelsea backline and threading a through ball into the empty half. Taking it into the box, King cut inside, wrong-footing a sleepy Tosin, and planted the ball by the near post away from Sanchez. 1-0 - a statement of intent from a brilliant Fulham opening.

The cruel sound of a VAR intervention brought us back from our euphoria. Referee Rob Jones was called over to the touchline to view absurdly slow footage of Muniz, mid-pirouette, placing his foot on Chalobah’s during open play. Physical, sure, but not atypical of the sort of contact regularly seen in professional football and never equivalent to the severe injury Chalobah (who had been prone for the passage of play after the incident). Over the tannoy, Jones declared it a “careless challenge” and ruled the goal out.

Still, Fulham persisted, cutting through a limp Chelsea defence. King had another breakthrough into the final third but put his shot straight into Sanchez and a long ball from Lukic to Sess let the winger whip the ball into the box, where a marginally-offside Muniz knocked the ball straight into the keeper. But for Caicedo’s determination, Fulham might have done more - the Ecuadorian kept Chelsea alive as they reeled from the Fulham response. Indeed, his tenacity dragged us away from football and into a physical contest - suddenly the referee was intervening regularly, awarding a string of fouls between the sides and drawing the ire of the crowd. The game grew tetchy, our attacks less frequent and fluent, and in the mess Chelsea found their own plans again, Neto using his pace to burst back into Fulham’s territory and force a defender to deal with him.

Perhaps we should have been more alert to the fact Delap’s injury and VAR’s intervention was going to add several minutes of stoppages on. After eight minutes of largely Chelsea-controlled minutes, our hosts found themselves with successive corners beyond the end of play. Eight minutes became nine, Enzo found his finesse with his kick at just the right time, Pedro leapt ahead of a dozing Bassey and guided the ball into the goal with his head. It was a galling moment - Chelsea’s fussing at the corner extended the minutes, itself far longer than usual because of the contentious VAR call, and our good work across the game had been rendered useless.

Second Half

Marco Silva, never one to shy away from his emotions, was furious on the touchline, and must have channelled some of that anger into his players over the interval - we started energetically, trying to resume our aggression against Chelsea, and taking the first real opportunity of the second half, Muniz heading off-target from Lukic’s cross. It was a promising start, and on another day it might have worked for us.

Chelsea, far from dormant, sought to double their lead, and their strength from set-pieces saw their team advance into our final third. With our box packed a chaotic situation unfolded - Chalobah swung a ball in, Pedro controlled it amongst a sea of Fulham defenders, Tete wrestled it off him and flicked the ball away, George swung the ball back in, the cross ricocheted off Sessegnon and the ball was eventually shunted out of play. It was here VAR chose to intervene again, alerting Salisbury to the arm that had blocked George’s cross as Sess turned away from the ball. Another laboriously slow set of replays followed, and after several minutes the penalty was given. Pedro’s handball, kicked onto his palm by Tete’s kick was dismissed by the officials - it is debatable whether this was under the margin that Sessegnon’s arm had breached, but what wasn’t was the stamp Iwobi received from Caicedo after Tete’s half-clearance, hurting Iwobi in the same manner Chalobah earnt a foul for in the second half.

It felt a stark injustice, and as Enzo put his penalty into the goal, the life in Fulham started to ebb away. Silva’s face, a pained laugh etched across it, captured best the exasperation the players must have felt - a staggering amount of effort had been put in, yet Fulham had a scoreline identical to the difficult times their less-proficient sides had struggled to for many failed Premier League campaigns. The deflation came at a perfect time for Chelsea, too. With Fulham having to tweak the backline to a conventional back four, Jimenez and Wilson arriving to inject some energy into the attack, Chelsea took control of the match, waltzing around our sullen defence. Leno spared us from collapsing, in truth - Joao Pedro owned the space in front of goal, setting up Estevao with a through ball and latching onto longballs to bypass our backline, both times denied from goal involvements by dives from the German.

The game whittled away from here. Robinson and Smith-Rowe arrived, backed later by Traore, helping us at least consolidate some possession, but Chelsea were composed and confident, happy to sit back and pick us off on the break with their own substitutes - Gittens had replaced Estevao to maintain the pace along the wing and Reece James added a touch of quality in the closing stages to suffocate Fulham’s attacking momentum. We had a glut of attackers on the pitch now but the sharpness had dissipated. A hideous Traore touch stopped a potential breakaway into the box from amounting to anything. Whilst he found his composure for a cross later Jimenez’ header was ugly, flying high and wide of goal. Even uglier was a freekick, earnt by substitute Santos hacking Wilson down just outside the box - Raul, eager to do worse than the previous effort, smacked it straight into the stands. Perhaps if Joao Pedro hadn’t stopped an Andersen header on the line we’d have found some magic and pulled off the comeback?

VAR-cical

Probably not though, because Fulham’s energy had been killed long before. It would be very easy to make a “referees favour big 6” argument here, and there’s part of me that’s itching to type it out now. Whether we could critically discuss the influence refereeing matches involving the high-profile teams has on referees is another question, and one that might require a broader study and some time removed from this match! I will refrain from it here, not least because there will almost certainly be a point later in the season that a questionable piece of refereeing will fall kindly for Fulham, but primarily because the greater ire today should be had towards VAR, which twice intervened to draw the referees attention to incidents already dismissed for pedantic interpretations of the game’s rules, and somehow managed to miss things in the replays they’d chosen to spotlight in the process. It’s the second week running we’ve been let down by tools brought in to improve upon refereeing, and somehow the mistakes are even more glaring.

The lack of consistency is deeply frustrating, not only for major incidents like the goals and penalty call but smaller ones, like the selectiveness yellow cards get handed out (Cucurella somehow escaped sanction for numerous blatantly cynical infractions) or the application of stoppage time (45+8 exceeded by over a minute for Chelsea, 45+8 given seconds and far less leniency for Fulham). The “1-0 to the referee” chants were quite amusing, but Salisbury and the officials aren’t really the culprit - the implementation of VAR as we’re seeing today is not of the quality a sport with the obscene resources English football has warrants. It benefits no one to have extensive pauses for dubious interventions in a fast-paced sport like football, and it needs urgent fixing before the potential positives it can wield get lost by a potential cancellation.

Good Start, Poor Ending for Fulham

Shall we try and focus on the football? Amongst all the nonsense Fulham at least demonstrated their versatility, playing the back-five effectively, utilising the ball efficiently and neutralising Chelsea’s best players like Pedro and Enzo for much of the game prior to the second goal. Andersen was a rock at the back, Castagne had his best game at RWB in months and Berge and Lukic were ruthless in taking the game to Caicedo’s level. King, of course, deserves the plaudits VAR has robbed him of - he has taken to regular Premier League action extremely well, is keeping an England international out of the side and delivers the spark the attack needs to get into the box with haste.

If I were to criticise anything it would be in our response to the setbacks. We’re all emotional, we all felt infuriated and irate at the decisions taken against Fulham today, but the game is 90 minutes (or 110 with the stoppages I guess) and Chelsea were given carte blanche to take the game for themselves after both VAR interventions, particularly in the second half. Defensively we were a bit at sea when we trailed the game - the wingbacks worked when absorbing pressure and countering, but Chelsea had the edge knowing we had to attack more and were able to pin us back with their own possession. The substitutes weren’t great today either - Wilson at least had a little zip but Traore was far too wayward with the ball again, Jimenez wasted his opportunities, Smith-Rowe was sluggish, ineffectual and removed from the action and Robinson is clearly still recovering from an injury.

Are Chelsea still Palmer FC?

Chelsea can’t control the fact VAR gave them some fortuitous decisions - they played the game they were given, and won it. I don’t think that they were terrible today before the moments - we had their gameplan nullified and were the ascendent team, but the football was never atrocious and they have bought enough quality to turn games their way, as demonstrated with the opening goal Enzo and Pedro carved from nothing. Who needs Cole Palmer when several other £100m footballers can put a moment of magic in?

I think Joao Pedro is a phenomenal signing for Maresca and was critical to Chelsea’s best moments today - as well as his ability as a finisher, forcing Leno into many saves and scoring an excellent header, he was the player Fulham had to be most attentive to around the box, particularly as Delap had to depart, and when we were looser in the second half Pedro popped up everywhere to generate chances for Chelsea. This connected the dots for Chelsea - Estevao, Neto, and later Gitten’s pacey dribbles were connected by the forward, sustaining Chelsea’s pressure over us across the match.

Let’s also spotlight Moises Caicedo, indefatigable across the entire match. He patched up the ramshackle defending of Tosin and Chalobah throughout the game, he kept Chelsea’s midfield structure together when Enzo had his quiet period, he covered the ground in the wings when Cucurella and Gusto were too far forward and his defensive acumen saves Chelsea a goal a game, at least. There’s work to be done at the back for Maresca, who will have to forge his assets into a backline that doesn’t need VAR to bail them out of the calamities they got into today, but with Caicedo there will always be defensive parity, and through a strong defence many great things arrive.

It’s Chelsea’s day, and Fulham’s disappointment - whilst the debate around VAR will rumble on, our season has its first red mark going into the international break. It should remind us that, even if controversy stamps itself onto the game, you can’t stop playing until the final whistle. The Premier League does not care for our woes, and Fulham will have to pick ourselves up and move on from the setbacks. Attention should instead turn to the transfer window - perhaps the Khans will have the antidote to our derby day blues in the form of a new signing? With time ticking away, we can only cross our fingers…