A meeting of west London’s two best teams of last season, 10th hosting ninth. After a far stormier summer and in losing so slackly at home to Brentford, Fulham look in far greater danger of being unable to maintain previous standards.
Where will their goals come from? On Saturday night the club confirmed that Aleksandar Mitrovic has joined the Saudi Arabian gold rush and will team up with Neymar at Al-Hilal. “He forced everything to leave the club, he wanted to leave the club,” said Marco Silva. Raúl Jiménez, Fulham’s summer arrival and Mitrovic’s putative replacement, has now gone 25 Premier League games without a goal.
Silva, having turned down a Saudi opportunity himself, said he was “100% sure we are going to invest” in the closing days of the transfer market. “But the striker market is not easy.” The Riverside Stand, its central areas still empty as a lengthy building project drags on, is a towering reminder of high-premium jam tomorrow. For now, a lack of cutting edge and defending like Issa Diop’s for Yoane Wissa’s 44th-minute opener and Tim Ream’s clumsiness for a decisive, disputed penalty spell trouble.
Brentford, continuing a proud record at Craven Cottage, having only lost twice there since 1981, look fully capable of pushing further onwards and upwards. “That’s us, that’s what we do, we make teams uncomfortable, our strikers work hard,” said their defender Nathan Collins. “We stayed strong; we kept our shape.”
If a couple of wobbles from new goalkeeper Mark Flekken, David Raya having joined Arsenal this week, sounded a note of caution, Fulham could not pressure him nearly enough. In Ivan Toney’s absence, Wissa and Bryan Mbeumo have scored five Premier League goals in two matches.
“I really enjoy it, I love to play in the middle,” said Wissa. “I spoke to Thomas [Frank] and he told me to press.”
Frank said: “We were quite confident that Wissa and Mbeumo will provide us goals. So will [Keane] Lewis-Potter and [Kevin] Schade. That’s why we haven’t brought in another striker.”
Flekken’s first flutter of uncertainty inspired Fulham to press and chase just as hard as their opponents, making for a fiercely fought first half of second balls and closed-off half-spaces.
Creative juices were in short supply, though Mathias Jensen, spotting Bernd Leno way out on safari, narrowly missed from a free-kick just inside his opponent’s half. Brentford had located their momentum and it took Antonee Robinson’s last-ditch scrape of Wissa’s underpowered shot to stop Christian Nørgaard tapping home. Wissa was not to be denied when Diop made a mess of Kenny Tete’s back pass. The Congolese forward skated to the ball and slotted in.
After the break, Jensen might have doubled the lead with a volley after Fulham’s Bobby De Cordova-Reid had faded a chip off the crossbar. The scrappiness continued, and Rico Henry was booked for time-wasting when he and Schade quarrelled over a throw-in.
Fulham’s fate was sealed by Ream bundling into Wissa, the USA defender sent off for his second bookable offence. It looked soft, but Ream’s waving of a dismissive finger did little to change the mind of the referee, Darren Bond, or VAR. “The ref is always right, what can I say?” said an unapologetic Wissa.
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“From all 10 angles I cannot see anything there,” said Silva, before railing against the new season’s directives. “It’s the new Premier League, we have to get used to it. Any time you don’t have your hands in your pocket it’s a yellow card for the manager. Any time a player moves in the direction of the referee there will be a yellow card. We’ll have over 200 yellows in the first 10 weeks.”
From the spot, Mbeumo showed Toney is not alone in sublime penalty technique. The Cameroon forward doubled his total by tapping in from Kristoffer Ajer’s assist during what were nine unnecessary minutes of time added on. Fulham were long since resigned to defeat.
