As Andre Onana sprang up to produce acrobatic saves from Harry Wilson and Joao Palhinha, many Fulham fans will have sensed where this narrative was heading.
Sure enough, Manchester United clung on, Bruno Fernandes mustered a stoppage-time winner and history repeated itself.
Fulham manager Marco Silva said he wanted his team to “write a new story”, but it was same old, same old at Craven Cottage. For the fourth time in a season-and-a-half, Fulham were the dominant side against the Red Devils but lost.
And Saturday’s was the most worrying of Fulham’s recent defeats by United. The hosts failed to score from 18 shots, and it was their wastefulness, rather than anything else, that cost them on a day when their overall performance was spot on.
Aleksandar Mitrovic scored 14 Premier League goals last season, and his £46million summer exit to Al-Hilal has left Fulham toothless. The Serbian has not been adequately replaced.
Only Burnley have scored fewer than Fulham’s nine goals in the Premier League so far this term.
Equally concerning for Silva is that only five of Fulham’s league goals so far this season have been scored by attacking players, and only one by an out-and-out striker - Carlos Vinicius’s winner against Luton back in September.
Raul Jimenez has still not scored for Fulham since his £5.5m summer move from Wolves - in fact, he’s not netted in 33 Premier League games now - and has looked off the pace in the majority of his 10 appearances to date.
Vinicius, Jimenez and promising Brazilian Rodrigo Muniz have failed to score on all of their combined Premier League starts this season, and there is no leading No9 among them.
It begs the question: do Fulham need to enter the transfer market for a new striker in January?
On signings such as Alex Iwobi and Calvin Bassey, Fulham spent a total of £59.3m over the summer, outweighing what they got for Mitrovic.
While that figure may suggest the Mitrovic money has already been spent, it is unlikely that Silva would have signed his recent contract extension if he had not been given assurances that he would be financially backed in the transfer window.
"It is a remarkable achievement that Fulham are as high as 15th given their woes up front"
Fulham owner Shahid Khan and sporting director Tony Khan have, after all, been watching the same faltering forward line each week that Silva has been presiding over. They too are aware that teams without reliable goalscorers are often unreliable themselves.
If anything, it is a remarkable achievement that Fulham are as high as 15th given their woes up front. But it is not sustainable.
Pivotal as they enter a tough run of fixtures is that the manner of the United defeat on Saturday does not become a pattern.
Three of their next six league games are against Aston Villa, Liverpool and Newcastle, and then comes a quarter-final at Everton on December 19, with Fulham’s fanbase rightly viewing the Carabao Cup as a huge opportunity for silverware.
The recent performances of the likes of Iwobi, Palhinha, Willian and Bassey show there is so much right at Fulham.
The problems are clear. They don’t have a goalscorer, and they don’t score goals.
