Positives and Negatives: Fulham 1-3 Everton

Jack Stroudley looks back at another afternoon to forget for Fulham.

Can someone just please end the season, it’s over. Everton ran out 3-1 winners at Craven Cottage on Saturday and while the sun was out it wasn’t shining down on Marco Silva’s side who have thrown away European football. TWENTY-EIGHT points dropped from winning positions this season have completely flummoxed us and meant that while mathematically Europe is still possible, these final two games are effectively dead rubber. It really was a tale of two halves with the second much more poignant than the first, but what are the main takeaways from the game?

Positives

Academy cameos

It was almost another week of no negatives but the most miniscule crumb of comfort came from Josh King and Marital Godo getting some more Premier League minutes. Both academy players came on in the 83^rd minute when proceedings were done and dusted. Not an awful lot to report from either cameo, Godo may have impressed slightly more as it was quite refreshing to see a winger actually want to try and take on a defender. Nevertheless, it’s minutes that fans have been calling out for and it’s minutes that we saw on Saturday.

Negatives

Over and out

I often start these by talking about individual performances and then the overall context of the result but this one feels like the latter should be addressed first. For lack of a better phrase Fulham have lacked cojones for months and we have once again fallen into old routines of letting a season fizzle out. This one feels the most frustrating of the lot though as a serious opportunity seems to have fallen through. Fulham have been amongst it all season, bettering those above us and giving the fans a springboard to believe – that springboard has snapped in half.

A lack of investment in January, poor managerial decisions & players just generally not looking up to it at times has created a perfect storm on the Thames and despite being in the conversation all season, Fulham might not even make it into the top-half. Saturday was a perfect juxtaposition for the season, start well, fall short and go again next time. Put your passports away, it’s over.

Mistakes in defence

We simply got ‘Moyes’d’ on Saturday by not taking our chances (we’ll get onto that) and being catalysts of our own downfall with sloppy defensive errors. The first goal takes a nasty deflection which completely wrong-foots Bernd Leno but to allow Vitali Mykolenko the space he was afforded is lazy. The second goal is shambolic from all involved. A lofted ball into the back post finds an unmarked Michael Keane to guide home. Andreas Pereira loses his man far too easily, but why is Andreas Pereira marking Michael Keane in the first place?

The third goal is a mishap from Joachim Andersen and an effort from Beto (ironically) that Leno will know he should do better for. Mistakes are part and parcel of football, it happens at all levels but to gift two (arguably three) goals at this level is unforgivable and given the context of our season has really cost us.

Shots shots shots

I’d like to preface this by saying Jordan Pickford had an exceptional game for the Toffees. England’s number one made five saves throughout including a fantastic stop to deny Harry Wilson’s clever chip. That being said (and this feels like a bit of a broken record) we simply have to do more in the final third. At times today our passing felt intricate, lively and with all of the urgency we’ve wanted to see from this Fulham side for ages. But we struggled with that final effort all afternoon, eighteen shots throughout the game and bar Jimenez’s goal and the previously mentioned lob from Wilson we really didn’t make them count.

As much as we need to improve defensively, the same can be said in the final third. At times on Saturday, our passing was good, but during the second half, it fell flat, and like we saw last week at Aston Villa, when we needed that sense of urgency, we struggled to do anything. On another day, Fulham would’ve got a penalty, but this performance wasn’t good enough, and they all need to be held accountable.