Positives and Negatives: Crystal Palace 0-2 Fulham

Jack Stroudley looks back at another successful London derby for Fulham.

What a week it’s been for Fulham! Two London derbies and six points means that Fulham enter the international break on a healthy looking 18 points. Since promotion to the Premier League, Selhurst Park has been a fruitful stomping ground for Marco Silva’s side with two wins, one draw and zero goals conceded. Nevertheless, yesterday was an assured performance throughout and here are the positives and negatives of the game.

Positives

Comfortable and convincing

Throughout the week when it became apparent that Palace’s key players were dropping like flies the more it felt to me like a game Fulham had to win, those thoughts were solidified at 1:45pm yesterday on route to Selhurst seeing their line-up. I don’t want the narrative to be of that though as Fulham still had to turn-up, and boy did they. A dominant performance throughout with every player putting in a shift to ensure that Crystal Palace were limited in chances and wasteful with possession.

A special shoutout to Alex Iwobi whose performance yesterday summed up the season he’s having, buzzing around the attacking areas and creating chance after chance. Smith-Rowe was once again magnificent in the attacking third and on a day where Fulham scored two, it could’ve been about six!

Scintillating Scandinavians

Sander. Berge. That’s it. That’s the tweet. Our Norwegian midfielder was absolutely on it yesterday. On the rare occasions that Crystal Palace were able to break forward and escape our initial press, Berge seemed to always be there to put out the fire. Following that Aston Villa performance last month there were slight concerns about whether or not he’s up to it, Marco Silva though has once again shown with a bit of time he will get the best out of a player.

On X there’s been a bit of debate throughout the season between Andersen and Lacroix and while I won’t comment on it too much, Lacroix didn’t do an awful lot to help his case yesterday. Andersen is just brilliant isn’t he? Five clearances (including one off the line), losing just one aerial duel all game as well blocking shots, intercepting the ball and tackling – he was on it yesterday. Last season while we had Tosin there was some concern about him in particular fixtures and I think that bringing back Andersen has proven to be a massive statement of intent from Fulham, what a bloke.

Strength in depth

The best problem that Marco Silva can have is a selection headache and he’s got about four of them! For the first time since promotion under Silva it feels like we have two capable players in pretty much every position and as a result of that, people are knocking on the door. Sasa Lukic is expected to be back after the international break and will surely slot into the team, but for who? Sander Berge has been brilliant over the last few weeks and surprisingly so has Andreas Pereira who doesn’t deserve to be dropped.

Then going forward you’ve got Harry Wilson whose on fire and more than deserves a start, but you can’t drop Iwobi whose been magnificent and I also think Reiss Nelson was solid yesterday with some good chances created. In attack Rodrigo Muniz will fancy his chances with Raul Jimenez’s patch seeming to have dried up slightly. These are all fantastic problems to have and are a reason why we’re looking up rather than down.

Sky is the limit

There’s a lot of talk about certain Premier League managers (the likes of Thomas Frank and Andoni Iraola) for the work they’ve managed to do with clubs to steer them clear of relegation and look up rather than down, but why not Marco? Personally I’m happy with being the plucky under the radar side but Silva and his coaching staff have absolutely transformed this football club.

Following a more than comfortable promotion to the Premier League we’ve had a top-half finish, FA Cup Quarter-Final and Carabao Cup Semi-Final all while losing and replacing key cogs in the system and continuing to flourish. As a result of the work Silva has done, Fulham now go into every game not fearing a singular opponent and taking the game to them. The sky is the limit under Silva, enjoy it while it lasts.

Negatives

VAR-cical decision

One slight negative to come out of yesterday was that horrendous VAR decision to rule out Smith-Rowe’s second. I get that over the course of a season your luck is cyclical but it felt unbelievably frustrating. Ultimately it didn’t matter too much as Fulham ran out comfortable victors but to have a goal chalked off in a crucial part of the game for what felt like a toenail feels incredibly harsh. Maybe it’s because Fulham haven’t had a goal chalked off for offside in what feels like forever, but it felt worthy enough to talk about. Oh well, Fulham are absolutely mustard – enjoy your Sunday roast!