For all the quality attacking players on the pitch we found it very difficult to break Fulham down. The decisive moment came three minutes before half time when Gareth Bale got his head on Rafael van der Vaart’s freekick and diverted it past Mark Schwarzer.
Roman Pavlyuchenko is hardly unlocking defenses at the moment and we struggled to conjure anything other than speculative efforts - Bale and Benoît Assou-Ekotto had shots parried. There was some nice football played, Van der Vaart and Luka Modrić nutmegging Danny Murphy and Aaron Hughes respectively.
Vedran Corluka came on when Alan Hutton went off injured and played a lot of very good balls to Aaron Lennon. Unfortunately Lennon had his worst game of the season misplacing most of his passes and blowing our best chance at a second goal with five minutes to go. Lennon ran 70 yards with the ball, but rather than square it he had a shot easily blocked.
Fulham applied a lot of pressure in the second half, but the application of pressure alone does not get you anything. The only time they came really close was when Michael Dawson cleared the ball a couple of yards from goal with Andy Johnson waiting to pounce.
The win completed a trio of victories over the festive season. Early in the season too often we were coming out of games like this with a draw and if we don’t sign a decisive striker in the transfer window the same thing will start happening again.
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