Positives and Negatives: Newcastle 1 – 2 Fulham

In the perfect definition of a game of two halves, Fulham turned around a 1 – 0 deficit against the Toon to come back and win a tight match in emphatic fashion. After failing to register a single shot on target, Fulham found their feet and played through the Newcastle back line to perfection to make it a rare double for us against powerful opposition, proving we can compete with the very best in the Premier League and keep those European dreams alive. Let’s dive into the truly positive, and lesser negative sides of how things played out at St James’ Park.

Positives

A trademark Raúl special

Once again, I’m left in awe of Raúl Jiménez looking at another trademark goal that offers so much more than just a tidy, albeit deflected, finish at the end. Newcastle in Fulham’s final third, find their attacking pass intercepted by Raúl at the back, who drives the ball forward, passes play onto to his teammates, who progress a delightful switching of play across the pitch, which grants Antonee Robinson his 10th assist of the season, and our Mexican frontman finds himself at the front of the attack again to tuck the ball away at the end of the move that he started.

I love the synergy of the counter attack from defence to attack. He is at the heart of Fulham’s play and refuses to stand upfront and expect everything to be played to him. I think there are still some Fulham fans out there that don’t quite appreciate what quality Raúl brings and he deserves a huge amount of recognition for passages of play like this. A much improved performance from last season’s red card, no arse-to-face showdown against Longstaff this time.

A set-piece masterclass

How wonderful to see two substitutes combining astutely to put the ball in the back of Dubravka’s net. We’ve been crying out for more success from set pieces all season, and it feels like they’re starting to tip in our favour again. This time Andreas Pereira sends in a perfectly delivered cross to the near-post with some venom behind it, creating that satisfying dilemma for the defence that they need to get a block in on the ball regardless of the other attackers at play, then all it takes is a small touch to throw off the keeper, who committed to grasping the ball at the post, only to find Rodrigo Muniz’s deft touch tip it over him gracefully. A really well-worked goal that took everyone by surprise.

Andreas has had to do a lot to win the fans back over since the questionable interview ahead of the transfer window, but it feels like he’s working harder than ever before and today was a lovely example of that paying off on the pitch, and Muniz celebrates his fourth off the bench, reiterating his bright Fulham future. Great squad depth.

No joy for Isak

With 22 goal contributions across the current season, and 13 goals in his last 10 outings ahead of the match, trying to stop the most in-form striker in the Premier League is a mean feat, Alexander Isak is proving to be (almost) unstoppable. With an abundance of talented attacking players and pace, today’s game could have been a very different story, but all of Fulham’s defence rose to the challenge. Anthony Gordon was having a lot of success down the left wing, beating Timothy Castagne on a couple of occasions to carve us open, but as the game went on he rose to the challenge and we managed to keep their hugely talented winger on ice.

While Joachim Andersen looked a little off the pace, his defensive numbers were strong with plenty of successful clearances, interceptions and defensive actions, and his trademark diagonal long ball today really gave us another dimension of play. Robinson was class as always tearing up the pitch with his pace, and Calvin Bassey was solid as always, strong on the ball to see us out of trouble. We got a little lucky with the woodwork still shaking from Sandro Tonali’s long-range effort and Isak’s wonderfully curled strike, but today the boys deserve huge credit for protecting Bernd Leno’s goal.

Negatives

Woe-ful Iwobi Deliveries

With only two of Alex Iwobi’s nine crosses finding a man at the end, it wasn’t just the numbers that didn’t look good, but the general attempts to progress attacks, albeit mainly in the first half, were pretty woeful today. On more than one occasion, Iwobi’s long balls forward offered no threat and found themselves lofting into dead areas and off the pitch for a goal kick. Coupled with no successful dribbles, no tackles or ground duels won, it’s one for the big man to forget. He knows this better than anyone else though, you could see the genuine frustration he was channeling at himself during the match and he does more than enough great stuff to have a bad day now and then. Improved in the second half with the rest of the team thankfully and in the end it didn’t impact the three points.

First half: same old story

One of the recurring themes of this season is that Fulham display such dominance of the ball, an admirable quality that nullifies our oppositions and stops them playing against us. Generally, because of this we create more chances than our counterparts too, but so often the stats show that despite our many attempts towards goal, they often end up off target or not being dangerous enough opportunities, or there’s just a general lack of clinicalness that we often see in opposition’s counter attacks. It’s certainly not Parkerball, but there are echoes of it.

Our painful 1-0 defeat to Manchester United last week was a perfect example of this, while we can all say we were extremely hard done by with the singular deflected shot on target from outside the box sinking us, ultimately we lost because we were wasteful in front of goal. The first half today was exactly like that, with no attempts on target. But I’d much rather a poor start to a game than a poor ending, and sometimes you have to feel out the game and grow into it which is exactly what we managed to do today to get the win.

Inconsistent Cavanagh

Joelinton was able to get away with repeated fouls unpunished for a large part of the game, and it seemed for Andersen and Robinson there was absolutely no hesitation to brandish those yellow cards. Then strangely the decisions seem to fall in our favour in the second half much to the Newcastle fans despair. For example, there was absolutely no need for Tonali to get a booking against Adama Traore when he actually won the ball. When you look at those smaller decisions across the whole match it just felt as if he didn’t really grasp the pace of the game or the appropriate punishments. Thankfully in the end it worked in our favour, and although there were some good moments from the ref, overall the brandishing of the cards, or lack of, seemed a bit rash and unnecessary at times.

Fulham can celebrate a Premier League win at St. James’ Park for the first time in 16 years, back then the Toon were under Alan Shearer after countless manager changes, then they were actually relegated. Eddie Howe’s record of eight wins in nine matches against Fulham has been wrecked this season as we stand victorious, taking all six points from an extremely well-organised team challenging for Europe again. It really is a wild, wacky and wonderful Premier League season we’re having – and the ending could be more surprising then we think.