Crystal Palace are quietly mastering the art of the away win. This was a sixth in succession in all competitions – they have lost only once on their travels, in all competitions, since late October – and a classic of its type.
Palace spent much of their day out of possession but most of it in control, while skewering their opponents with the occasional rapier thrust. Twice in the first half Eberechi Eze cut Fulham open and, in their efforts to recover, the home side displayed plenty of effort but precious little spark before the substitute Eddie Nketiah ended all hope with quarter of an hour to play.
For Fulham it was a fifth successive defeat at this stage of the competition, a downbeat end to a day they started in bright sunshine and high belief. The teams emerged to a cacophony of fans and flags and firework fog, the pre-match hype infecting the home supporters and spreading to their team.
Marco Silva’s side started the game like a swarm of wasps around a jam jar, all movement and excitement and danger. It took them less than two minutes to create something, Rodrigo Muniz bustling past a couple of challenges and into the area before opening up his body and sidefooting towards the far post, only for the ball to bend in the wrong direction and skid wide.
And that, for them, was as good as it got. They could not sustain that energy and Muniz, in particular, strayed from the combination of strength and perseverance with which he crafted that chance for himself. There was a brief period around the half-hour mark when within a couple of seconds of receiving the ball and almost irrespective of the circumstances he would invariably be on the ground, looking imploringly towards an unsympathetic referee. It was from one such appeal that the opening goal sprung: Muniz grounded, Marc Guéhi gesticulating furiously behind him, the referee ignoring them both, the ball played quickly down Palace’s left flank. Tyrick Mitchell played infield to Eze, who cut inside Sasa Lukic and curled a deliciously precise shot inside the far post.
Five minutes later Palace’s lead was doubled, again from a swift attack down their left. This time Eze was released down the wing, tricked his way into enough space to curl a cross past Sander Berge and delivered the ball perfectly into the path of Ismaïla Sarr, who headed in at the near post.
Home advantage never seems to count for much with these teams: after 2-0 away wins in both league encounters this season this result continues a long-term trend – not a single home victory in nine meetings this decade and just one in 13 now across the last 20 years, a period in which 23 goals have been scored by travelling sides and only nine by their hosts.
Fulham will feel this would have been a different story had they only capitalised on their domination of the opening 20 minutes, even if for all the action and excitement they never created another chance as good as the one Muniz missed in those early moments, Andreas Pereira missing their next best after being found by Calvin Bassey’s pull-back.
None of this did much to discomfit Dean Henderson in the Palace goal, and the spell was eventually broken in the 26th minute when, with the visitors’ first shot of any note – Oliver Glasner called it their “first hello” – Jefferson Lerma sent a volley dipping over Bernd Leno and on to the crossbar.
The second half for Fulham was a similar story to the first, only with less precision and increasingly little hope. They dominated for a while and won a succession of corners, from which Palace won a succession of headers, before Henderson was finally tested by Willian’s 68th-minute curler, and again seconds later – and this really is thin gruel – when the resulting corner, flicked on by Joachim Andersen, almost fell to Bassey.
Jean-Philippe Mateta made his widely predicted return after he was taken off on a stretcher in the fifth-round win over Millwall, nursing not just his injury but also a run of eight goals in his last 10 games.
It was in many ways an ideal comeback, even if he may well have had fewer touches in this Cup tie than the 25 stitches in an ear with which he ended his last, thanks to the Millwall goalkeeper Liam Roberts’ wild tackle.
He was taken off here with 20 minutes to play and within five of them his replacement ended Fulham’s fading hopes, Nketiah played onside by a dawdling Bassey as he ran into the left side of the area and sidefooting past Leno.
