Some things aren't meant to go together. They don't look like a good collision.
And so the unstoppable Serbian force of Aleksandar Mitrovic met the freely movable, extremely bulliable Bristol City backline. It proved the utter carnage that would rightly pop in your head when Jay Dasilva is seen at right wing-back, Cam Pring has to stop the Championship's leading marksman from centre-back and Callum O'Dowda is marking him at corners.
Statistics aren't everything in football, far from it in fact, but it doesn't take a scientific microscope with high-tech lenses to examine the league's joint second-worst defence, nor does it need telling twice by Marco Silva that Fulham have one of the best attacks in this division's history.
Just taking a second to truly understand that Fulham have now scored more goals this season than 20 teams did in the entirety of last year, and that Mitrovic, who is more than just a big playground bully, has just five fewer than the whole Robins team, in less matches.
That's why there was actually a small sense of sorrow and maybe even forgiveness in the applauding away City fans. It was always a distant dream that even Antoine Semenyo's very best attempts could prolong and prevent a pretty ugly mauling in London.
This isn't a season-ending result though, the first-half implosion shouldn't linger for much longer than the journey home. There are lots of lessons to learn in physicality, quality, and Graham Taylor would be strapping the defence together with rope, but it isn't unsolvable.
What went wrong for City is all too apparent, so here's some of the finer moments from a massively forgettable day in the capital...
Power out
If you were already at the ground by about 2:40pm this won’t have been missed, given the delayed kick-off. It was only 15 minutes but nonetheless the circumstances were fairly comedic.
With just over a quarter of an hour on the sand timer until the action got under way, all the power went off around the ground in a wave of electrical failures. The only remaining power was the main floodlights and the PA system along with music.
Not too many people thought much of it to start with, just the press box frantically refreshing laptops and phones to send the final pregame post or preview video. Everyone then clicks on their 4G so there’s a lag of 17,000 people using the ground's mobile network.
It didn’t trouble the 1,600 travelling City fans who were buoyed by playing in their second home of recent times. With five wins in a row at Crave Cottage before Saturday afternoon they were eventually sent away feeling further away from home than ever.
The Cider Army were there to enjoy the day in the capital regardless and with the Severnside derby to come next weekend, it seemed a good time to test the vocal chords and get the choir in good voice.
The fans sang "Cardiff get battered everywhere they go" on repeat whilst the power outage was keeping everyone in the dark, so to speak. Those that had been delayed gaining entrance into the stadium because of the brief cut would have been able to hear the songs from outside and halfway down Stevenage Road.
The City fans made some of the loudest noise that they had all season in the first half and produced incredible images when Semenyo sent them ahead twice in the first half. They were bouncing in unison that threatened to break the foundations of the historical old London ground.
Two very different teamtalks
When it comes to bad first halves, scoring two goals away at Fulham isn’t bad. Conceding five is, however.
A first half, 22-minute, hat-trick wipes all hope of getting anything from the game, hopes are dashed and then onwards it’s a training exercise or chance to earn back some dented respect or confidence.
The City team will have hated coming back out to play the second half, it can’t be a nice feeling. Knowing that it can’t get much better and really can get worse when there’s cries of "we want 10" from the home crowd.
That doesn’t mean that Pearson didn’t have to make changes or have stern words to his team. His half-time team talk consisted of “we’d surrendered too easily and that we forced sometimes to play when it wasn’t on to play and turned down the opportunities to play when we could have done.
“That, I think, is down to how the game panned out, so taking the lead twice. The second equaliser was annoying in the sense that there is a suggestion that there is a foul in the build up to it but it was just too easy to get in.”
Shoring up the midfield and defence looked the best bet for damage limitation and coach Alex Ball tried his best to influence the game. As the players were taking their positions on the pitch he joined them in the middle of the park with a flipboard and waved his hands around him into the space where Han-Noah Massengo and Andy King were standing.
It was a bit late for a revolutionary tactical tweak that would swing the game enough to make this memorable for the players. It did show that Ball and the rest of Pearson’s coaching staff remained totally committed to improving the performance for the second half.
Williams' Wigan comeback
Saturday’s are made for football. So, when you can’t play for your team, what’s the next best thing to do? Go and watch and support your ex-teammates, of course.
That’s what Joe Williams did anyway. He was spotted by many in the Wigan away end for their trip to Doncaster on Saturday.
Williams, who is still missing for City due to an injury but is back in training and pushing for a return, hopefully towards the end of the month, wasn’t part of the depleted travelling squad that journeyed to the edge of the River Thames. With a weekend off and nothing more to do, he spent the afternoon watching the Latics in League One.
After being spotted in the away end at the Keepmoat Stadium he was greeted with chants of, "Joe Williams, we want you to sign" and "Talal, Talal, sign him up", in reference to Wigan owner Talal Al Hammad.
There has been a positive response to this from City and Wigan fans who both like to see their player and ex-midfielder enjoying himself.
Some more ambitious supporters of the League One side were trying to bubble some speculation in the transfer cauldron but there’s no chance of that happening. Williams well and truly qualified from Wigan last season and although he was unable to prevent the side being relegated he clearly left a lasting impression on the club’s fans.
He hasn’t played a game of League One football in his life and no matter the credibility of Wigan’s promotion push this season, Williams will be in red for a while longer yet.
Once he is back and truly ready to compete for City he will be a massive addition and the hole that is left by him was truly gaping against Fulham as Massengo and King struggled to shut down Marco Silva’s team.
Unlike with Semenyo and Kasey Palmer in the City away end at Birmingham earlier this season there is no evidence of anything more than a grand day out for Williams, and that’s the closest he’ll be to a Wigan shirt again.
At home in the Cottage
Not that you'd necessarily want to read it, but we could write several hundred more words about overlaps in players between these two squads. The nature of the Championship and the transfer deals in the league indicate that there’s going to be players that move around a fair bit, but the levels of familiarity between Fulham and Bristol City are quite astounding.
Not only is there the former City duo of Bobby Decordova Reid and Joe Bryan who were discussed in more length about their past in Bristol last week, Alfie Mawson is on the Cottagers’ books and spent a season on loan at Ashton Gate last season.
Elsewhere we have the Derby connection with Cyrus Christie, Andi Weimann and Chris Martin who were all at the Rams and had overlapping spells there. Not to mention Martin and Tomas Kalas who have both had time at Fulham in the past four years.
Rob Atkinson was part of the Under-23 set-up at Craven Cottage, without a first team appearance, from 2017-2019 after joining from Basingstoke.
An unlikely connection is also between Williams and Antonee Robinson who played together at Everton for the Toffee’s U23 side in 2016/17, though the former's endeavour up north for the day meant they didn’t get a reunion.
Anthony Knockaert, not involved with Fulham on the day, has ties with Pearson, Andy King, Matty James and Danny Simpson. Also known as the ‘Leicester lot’, the French winger made 106 appearances for the Foxes under Pearson between 2012 and 2015 when the current City trio were there.
Finally, there’s the Chelsea connection which is well established at City with Palmer, Kalas and Jay Dasilva, but Fulham have been doing some local shopping themselves. With Michael Hector and Nathaniel Chalobah being at the club in the same period as the City players were at Cobham.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t actually much in terms of visual meet and greets for the returning players. The only one that was spotted was Kalas having a brief chat with Tim Ream who was his centre-back partner during his loans in 2016 and 2017.
It wasn’t a great day for either defence with eight goals in total and some lax play from both sets of defenders. It didn’t stop the former colleagues having a catch up and hug on the pitch at full time though.
Maybe they were discussing who had the better beard?
Pearson praises fans
We have mentioned the away fans already but their reaction to the full-time whistle was once again telling. Away from home you wouldn’t expect to hear boos above the home fans, but it didn’t sound like there were any. On a journey with TFL through London, a delay, and an uninspiring demolition, if boos were ever welcome then this would have been it.
Once again the City support were in tune with their team and recognised the chasmic difference in quality. City weren’t close enough to being organised enough, let alone physical enough, to stop the service and end product of Mitrovic but they didn’t lack effort or commitment again.
Pearson said as much after the game as he revealed that his squad hasn’t got the make-up that he needs it to have.
“In all honesty there are times I’d prefer to have a tighter, more defensively-structured outlook on a game but unfortunately we don’t have the players to do that” he said.
City fans aren’t unrealistic and their undying championing of the team is worthy of respect. The players weren’t greeted as heroes after the game, but the majority of the crowd did stay to clap them off the pitch and they will have seen an open Pearson in front of them.
Not known for his visual expressions of fondness, he stood and applauded the fans and his own players until everyone had left the pitch. He took Semenyo under his wing and gave him a quick chat as the fans sang "viva Semenyo" to praise the striker’s blistering game.
Then came Jay Dasilva who was used as the puppet in an unfamiliar role at right wingback. Far from being angry at his player, Pearson once again welcomed Dasilva and hugged him warmly and patted his head with comfort.
It doesn’t mean the world and many will say that thanking the away crowd is the bare minimum for a manager, but for someone usually introverted in emotions after a game this was a nice moment to witness.
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