Positives and negatives: Fulham 1-3 Liverpool

Jack Stroudley looks back at Sunday’s defeat against Liverpool.

It certainly wasn’t a ‘Super Sunday’ at Craven Cottage, with Fulham on the receiving end of a deserved 3-1 defeat against Liverpool. We’ve liked a scalp against a big six side this season and while we’ve given Liverpool a run for their money on four occasions this year, the Merseysiders continue to have our number. It was a pretty drab afternoon at the Cottage with nothing really to shout about, here are the positives and negatives from the game.

Positives

Composure from Castagne

The argument of Tete v Castagne has rumbled on throughout the season and after a switch around a few weeks ago leading to Kenny Tete having a game to forget at Nottingham Forest, Castagne seems to have won the battle, and today once again showed that. A solid performance from the Belgian who was the strongest of a pretty drab back four, was composed on the ball and during the one spell of the game that Fulham looked good on the ball scored his first in a black & white shirt. I love Kenny Tete, but I think that Timmy Chestnuts is here to stay.

Negatives

Mistakes falter Fulham

I thought that Fulham in patches looked okay today, the first half was solid and we looked good in the transition. But you can’t afford to make mistakes against anyone at the level and Fulham gifted three goals to Liverpool. The first came from a sloppy and unnecessary challenge from Palhinha (who is now two yellows away from a three game suspension which carries over to next season), no complaints from Bernd Leno for the goal but a silly foul from the midfielder gifted Alexander-Arnold with an opportunity to shoot from distance – which he took.

We’ll get onto the second half as a whole in a bit but Alex Iwobi’s mistake for Liverpool’s second summed up our day. A completely unnecessary pass gifted the ball back to the visitors who worked it to Gravenberch allowing Liverpool to regain the lead in comfortable fashion. Liverpool continued to press and Leno got a hand to Jota’s first and he will feel he should’ve done better. Don’t get me wrong, we didn’t deserve anything from the game but to gift Liverpool all of their goals feels very frustrating.

Sluggish second half

We started the first half slow but got ourselves back into it with good transition play and a deserved equaliser from Castagne. You’re thinking at this point, just get through the first spell of pressure from Liverpool in the second half and there could be something in this for us. Liverpool started the half strong and scored from an already mentioned Alex Iwobi mistake and while they were good in that second half, we were also poor.

Constantly giving away possession and being second to every ball allowed Liverpool to dictate play with 56% of the ball in the second half. Marco Silva tried to switch things around bringing on Harry Wilson and Tom Cairney but the game was done and our inability to match a strong Liverpool side in the second half cost us.

Tourists take over

Of everything that happened at Craven Cottage, this was once again the most frustrating for me. Fulham’s abysmally priced tickets once again would have priced out Fulham fans from attending today with tickets all around the home end falling into the hands of tourists and away fans. It was evident from all three goals with pockets of the Hammersmith, Johnny Haynes, Riverside and Putney ends celebrating whenever Liverpool put the ball into the back of net. It’s getting beyond a joke at this point, but is anything going to change? Of course not.