Fulham throw away lead as Ipswich steal late comeback victory

Sessegnon’s opener cancelled by Ouattara and O’Shea as Arbeloa’s substitutions backfire at Portman Road

Club football is back, but after today’s result few in Fulham colours will want it. Our winless form resumes in ugly fashion, as Ipswich came from behind to take a 2-1 win at Portman Road this afternoon. Alvaro Arbeloa needed a strong result to lift some of the pressure growing at the Cottage but this result has only amplified it - Ryan Sessegnon’s opening goal was blown through atrocious substitutions and passive football as a horrible end to the game saw late strikes from Ouattara and O’Shea render us pointless. It’s a grim set of circumstances for the club, and a rotten state of affairs to find ourselves in as the season consolidates…

First Half

There’s been some noise about the length of the international break around the footballing world and watching the opening spell of the match gives some indication as to why. The modern Premier League sees international stars adorn every team - the high quality they deliver is lost when they’ve spent weeks donning their national shirts, and both Ipswich and Fulham spent the formative moments of the match trying to rekindle their chemistry, sluggish passes and unimaginative moves making for unremarkable viewing.

Ipswich, sitting pretty with two league wins before the break, made the first serious moves of the game, winning a couple of corners through their tenacious pressing and generating a little danger for our backline to deal with. Thankfully our early work in the box was solid, with some nice defensive clearances from our growing Bassey-Affengruber partnership, and the aerial threat didn’t amount to much. Pace proved a little trickier - Philogene had some flair on the left, playing a ball over the defence that Leno rushed awkwardly off his line to prevent Emersonn taking, and a solid press on Sessegnon moved the ball back into the centre, where Emersonn’s lay-off for Enciso produced a shot that fizzed narrowly wide of the post. A solid interception from Lukic, pouncing on a sloppy Bobb touch, let him feed Philogene again, but after wriggling away from Tete he could only play a tame shot into Leno’s hands.

There was energy in the air, but Ipswich weren’t making it count - their long balls had promise but the quality in the box wasn’t being realised, typified by Enciso playing a delectable pass to Daizen Maeda in the box ahead of a stumbling Sessegnon but miscontrolling the ball and losing the chance entirely. Davis being booked for a reckless slide on King seemed to turn the tide somewhat, Fulham getting on the ball and trying to exert pressure on Ipswich. It was tricky, as the movement and execution from our players wasn’t at its finest.

Captain Bassey asserted himself on the ball to get the team playing, which moved us further up the pitch. Bobb’s footwork dribbling along the right needed interventions from O’Shea and Ouattara to stop one move, producing a corner that Affengruber headed wide. King, when he got on the ball, combined nicely with his teammates, at one stage combining well with Iwobi in the final third to earn a free-kick following an arm from Lukic. Berge was the taker, pumping his shot into the Serbian before Charles’ lifted his effort on the rebound into the stands. Indeed, Berge took a more proactive role in the spell, gliding into gear when Bobb and Tete occupied Ipswich along their left, collecting the ball from them with a touch and rifling a shot goalwards that Walton had to push over the bar.

Our best chance of the half was in its latter stages. An intervention in midfield from Bassey let Charles move the ball forward to our frontline, setting the Fulham counter-attack in motion. Iwobi’s guile on the left fed Berge, again in a decent position, who slipped Garcia into the box, taking a touch to create the angle away from Diop… but fired his shot wide at the near post, seemingly unaware of the space Walton left available on the other side - the opportunity was loss. Later, a fine pass through the midfield from Iwobi found King, who might have troubled Walton with a first time shot on the edge of the box, but the ball was recycled instead, and Iwobi’s similarly insightful pass to Sess could only be bent off-target by his weak foot. Whilst Ipswich could point to similar mishaps at our end, yet another touch in the box spurned by Maeda towards the end of the half, here an Enciso through-ball exploiting Sessegnon’s rustiness, it was Fulham who looked the stronger side as the half ended.

Second Half

Could the second half see us move into the lead against a newly-promoted opponent? Once again Ipswich started energetically, their front-footedness earning a free-kick off Bassey in a very dangerous area. Enciso may wish he hadn’t bothered dummying it for Davis, the left-back butchering his technique and lifting the ball quite comfortably over the bar. After stopping a dangerous Charles drive into the box, a clearance headed Emersonn’s way led to Bassey impeding the striker - from the resulting free kick, a quick move through the pitch saw Enciso wriggle around our defence, feeding Emersonn for a shot that Leno had to catch.

We needed to nullify the situation, and some proactive football from Affengruber did just that, taking the play forward with a run into defence that needed O’Shea to step up to him. It unpieced Ipswich’s defensive structure, letting Bobb combine with King to allow the latter to sneak into the box, dribbling to the goalline to take Walton off his line and playing the ball back into the middle for Garcia. He had the world to aim for, but somehow guided his shot into Diop, whose side deflected the ball wide for a corner. Yet the pressure was mounting, and after two Bobb corners from the right needed heading away, a third from Iwobi on the left could only escape as far as Sessegnon outside the box, who took a controlled touch to set up the shot and guided his strike through the crowd, too low and powerful for Walton to stop it.

1-0, and a nice reminder of Sess’ attacking talent to earn us the lead. But with 40 minutes still to play, we would need a proper gameplan to withstand the inevitable response from our hosts. It was quite gratifying, then, to see Enciso given the freedom of the park to lift a ball into the box for Emersonn within minutes of the opener. A beautiful ball floated between Affengruber and Sessegnon, meeting Emersonn’s head nicely to elude a stunned Leno… only to hit the right post, sparing us an immediate setback. We might have doubled the lead, in fact - King, never one to rest on his laurels, made his own attacking venture, gliding through a disparate Ipswich set-up and threading a ball through to Bobb on the opposing wing. With only Davis to beat he skilfully moved the ball around him, poised to score in the box… but sliced his shot into the skies, losing the opportunity. Iwobi made a similar move against Davis, collecting the ball ahead of him on a gallop forward, and once caught by the full-back lifted a neat cross into Garcia - the resulting header was too removed from the goal to trouble the keeper, and the header bounced harmlessly into his hands.

O’Neil decided to tweak his team, withdrawing an ebbing Philogene and a largely passive Florentino for Clarke and Palacios. It raised Ipswich’s energy, and whilst there was some good work from Berge to hold things together in response, the team were sliding into far too passive a mood with the amount of time left to play. Enciso’s quality continued to shine, lifting a dangerous ball into the box which Diop ought to have done better with on the rebound, and soon had Akpom and Flemming on the pitch to offer fresh striking options across the attack. They were passing quicker, moving themselves all over our half, and pumping the ball across the final third, and soon the time arrived for Arbeloa to make changes of his own.

Alas, ours were far less successful for our prospects in the game. Shea Charles, who had been solid if not spectacular, departed for the diminutive Manuel Angel, playing in his first ever Premier League match. Protecting a slender lead for 20 minutes for your first league win of the season is hardly the environment you want someone to enter a game in and it did nothing to abate the tension, Fulham very narrowly escaping a penalty call after Sessegnon again struggled to deal with Maeda’s pace along the flank, fortunate his contact with the winger happened outside the box. King, the one player capable of taking the ball and game forward for us, departed with Bobb for Muniz and Kevin, individuals with attributes far from opportune in the contest we found ourselves in, and sure enough we found ourselves pinned into our own half.

With our midfield weakened there was little respite for the defence, seemingly locked into a series of blocks and clearances from the attacking passes pouring into the box. Ipswich were camped in our half; Davis and Clarke combined well on their left, Tete needing to block the latter’s shot to give Leno an easier task at defending the chance. Yet another forward in Egeli arrived for Ipswich, ramping up the pressure further - Angel took a yellow card to stop Ouattara bursting into open space in our half and from the lengthy passing sequence that followed Ipswich almost had their equaliser, Egeli cutting inside on the right and drilling a shot off Sessegnon. It spun low towards the far post, Leno needing to push it away from the goal, and as Davis collected the ball on the other wing Berge was needed to stop the eventual cross being smacked into the net by Akpom’s powerful effort.

Arbeloa made one last set of changes, introducing Larsson and Smith Rowe for Garcia and Iwobi with minutes left of regulation time. But it was one set of poor changes too many, and the consequence of so many incorrect options on the pitch was felt shortly afterwards. With pressure mounting to boiling point, a Bassey clearance took multiple attempts to remove from danger, his header barely able to leave the final third. Ouattara, never one to lose his speed, devoured the loose ball, taking the touch to get the angle away from an indifferent Smith Rowe and blasting his shot quicker than Angel could react. It flew into the net besides the far post, beyond Leno’s sprawling dive, and following all the obvious warning signs Ipswich were level in the game.

Unsurprisingly, Ipswich were not satiated - a buoyant home crowd roared them into action as soon as we kicked off, and through their tenacity and high pressing quickly won a free-kick on their left with Clarke. The winger curled his set-piece into the box, where O’Shea nodded the ball ahead of Affengruber to steer it into the net. In a matter of minutes, our first league win had evaporated entirely, morphed into something far uglier. We might have saved a point late on - a hopeful ball into the box found Tete, who volleyed it back across goal for Kevin to swipe at goal, but Walton got himself into the right position, sticking a leg across the ground to divert the ball out. They saw off the corner, Akpom valiantly taking the ball away from danger and earning Smith Rowe a yellow card in the process, and saw out the remaining minute to complete the comeback victory, in a sullen moment for Fulham.

Arbeloa blows it again

I’m feeling miserable about the match, as I imagine most Fulham fans are, and Arbeloa takes a good portion of the responsibility for that today. Not for the first time we were in a strong position in the match, a goal ahead and capable of putting pressure on the opponent, and the changes intentionally made by the manager weakened our position, letting Ipswich run the game for the majority of the half. Charles should not have left the game when he did, and if his departure was unavoidable it should have been for the more imposing Larsson. We lost players still operating competently in attack like King and Bobb, replaced by vacuous cameos from Muniz, Kevin and Smith Rowe. The consequence was a team that failed to operate beyond the backline, who were eventually overwhelmed with the pressure and unable to keep the ball from the goal, undoing their solid work for much of the game. This has happened in a few games now - the team fail to read the warnings from the opposition, and Arbeloa makes incorrect substitutions at bizarre points in the match. Today, it cost us a win we really needed to earn.

There were problems elsewhere, too. Ryan Sessegnon is a fantastic player, beloved by everyone at the club, and his goal was a statement on his quality in attack, but he is not a long-term option for left-back, even with Robinson flaking in and out of fitness and form, and the man was very blatantly targeted by Ipswich in our backline today. He can consider himself lucky Maeda had his boots on the wrong feet for much of the game. Tete was also off his best today, though improved in the second-half and was part of a solid effort to keep us ahead for so long. There is at least some comfort in the spine of the team functioning quite well - Leno was solid in goal, Bassey and Affengruber continue to grow together, Berge was dynamic and effective throughout and clearly Charles is a glue that holds much of the team together, but without victories to match their performances the confidence will dip, and that can be calamitous for a newly-forming defensive unit.

Additionally, the team should have scored more than the single goal they managed today, and certainly should be capable of doing it external to set-pieces. Gonzalo Garcia works very hard and puts himself around the pitch nicely but his one main role is scoring goals, and his wastefulness cost us a safety cushion against Ipswich today. It’s a shame, because I thought the work of Iwobi, King and Bobb behind and around him was very strong, and should have yielded at least an assist for one of them. It’s tough, because young players need the right conditions to flourish and develop into star performers, but the pressure needs an answer now, and at some point Muniz will expect an opportunity to offer his own solution. The team being winless makes this alternative all the more enticing.

Ipswich - staying up?

A quick assessment of our hosts sees them with 9 points from 6 games, three wins on the board and looking more than a match for a lot of teams around the division. Certainly no one at Fulham can sniff at that at this moment in time! But they were given the conditions to take victory today - they were not particularly outstanding in their football, pressing well and moving aggressively but unable to find their composure in the final third until our team had slunk back into our own box. Indeed, had Fulham taken a few of their chances earlier in the match their performance might draw more scrutiny.

However, there’s plenty to praise for the hosts as well. I liked Enciso, who made a mission of collecting the ball and architecting moves around the pitch for his teammates to benefit from. He seems to bond well with those around him, and whilst Philogene, Emersonn and Maeda weren’t at their sharpest they put pressure on us that their teammates from the bench were able to morph into goals. Former Fulham man Lukic had a productive game and worked hard to keep Ipswich ticking around the pitch, perhaps enjoying the chance to dominate some of his former teammates around the park, as did Diop in defence, though perhaps to a lesser extent given how many missed opportunities we had. Davis and Ouattara were much better at moving forward congruently than our fullbacks were, and the latter’s speed proved far too much for Angel and Smith Rowe for his goal, in a rather uncomfortable reminder of how much physicality is needed to be effective in the Premier League right now. It’s not a certainty that Gary O’Neil’s side will be heading back to the Championship - or, perhaps more worryingly, a certainty we will be finishing above them in the Premier League

That discomfort, this unease lingering around our results so far, is very much the feeling at the moment. With two measly points from six games now, we’re 19th at best, winless and pitiful, having handed three points to a team we’d have pegged as a relegation candidate at the start of the season. I can write something to the effect of “it’s too early”, point out that the first game back from the international break is always likely to be a tricky one, that Ipswich are hardly a poor outfit, even that another flip of the coin might have earnt us the win and a far healthier set of headlines. Unfortunately, I have a hard time believing any of it. Arbeloa surely understood the urgency in claiming a first league win here, let alone another defeat, and his decisions wrecked our chances of doing so. Failure to do so against Hull next week will cast some ominous clouds over the Cottage, even in these initial months of the season.