FLIMSY FULHAM FOLD
Parker’s team briefly out of drop zone but fall back in after Villa strike
HE ROSE and then they fell. Nothing is ever simple in the adventures of Aleksandar Mitrovic, and nor will there be a straightforward route out of this cave for Fulham.
What a botched chance. What a collapse. What an underwhelming, messy way for Scott Parker’s side to blow their opportunity to draw a few breaths of clean air in the outside world.
For 17 minutes they were safe. Not safe in real, meaningful terms, but safe in the second-by-second existence of this division, and in that context they were briefly leading Aston Villa and free of the bottom three on goal difference.
To get there, they took the least bankable and least predictable path possible. The Mitrovic path. Good player on his day, Mitrovic, but not many of those days in club colours lately. There had been 197 of them since his last league goal, and two months since his most recent Fulham start. But there he was, rounding Emiliano Martinez in the 61st minute, and there were Fulham, in 17th place, if only for a moment in time.
Villa hadn’t turned up at that point, and really that’s been their story since Jack Grealish hurt his shin.
He had missed six straight games before this one and only five points and three goals had been collected in that run, so the late revelation that he would also sit out this one should have been a fine thing for Fulham. And it was, for 78 minutes. Villa just weren’t very good.
But then, floated by a trio of substitutes, this game took a funny turn. With 12 minutes to play, one of the reinforcements, Trezeguet, equalised. In the 81st minute he scored another. A subsequent tap-in for Ollie Watkins ensured a comfortable conclusion to a predominantly sticky day, and with it Villa had only a second victory in eight games.
But Fulham? Their third straight defeat will sting, particularly with a number of hard fixtures on the home stretch. Parker (below) was angry. Citing the psychological unravelling that followed Villa’s equaliser, he said: ‘The emotion of that goal affected us too much and we weren’t streetwise enough. The last 15 minutes I didn’t like at all.
‘Sometimes you need to take a knee like in boxing to survive and we didn’t have the mechanism to do that. But there are a lot of points to play for.’
Villa’s manager Dean Smith was able to ride the irritation of losing Grealish for another game. He said: ‘He felt discomfort in training and we had to pull him out. We erred on the side of caution. It is a miss for us but the players showed they can get a win without him. Jack makes us better with his quality but we have quality players here.’ Smith made only a single change to the side beaten by Tottenham before the international break. That saw Trezeguet replaced on the left of Villa’s striking three by Anwar El Ghazi, though it was ultimately the mid-game reversal of that decision which saved Villa. Parker’s big call was to bring in Mitrovic. Five goals in three games on his adventures with Serbia no doubt forced the issue, and what the team gained was a striker puffed up on confidence. Indeed, his first telling contribution was to attempt a shot from close to halfway and within the opening 10 minutes he had launched two further assaults on goal. Fairly frenetic stuff, and indicative too of Fulham’s strong start, which included Bobby De CordovaReid misdirecting a free header. Villa offered little until Watkins was denied a penalty in first-half stoppage time by VAR. Andy Madley had given a foul against Mario Lemina, but reversed his decision after looking at the pitchside monitor. The breakthrough, scored around the hour, came from two Villa mistakes. The first saw Morgan Sanson lose possession, before Tyrone Mings mis-hit a back-pass in the ensuing clean-up, which allowed Mitrovic to round Martinez and finish. Fulham were flying but abruptly they came down again, helped by Smith’s three changes. It was Trezeguet who turned the game, first with a neat finish from a Mings pull-back, and then via a volley from a Keinan Davis cross. Watkins wrapped it up after strong work from Bertrand Traore. ASTON VILLA (4-3-3): Martinez 7; Cash 7, Konsa 6, Mings 6.5, Targett 6; McGinn 7, Luiz 6 (Ramsey 74min, 6), Sanson 5 (Davis 67, 7); Traore 6, Watkins 6, El Ghazi 6 (Trezeguet 62, 7.5). Subs not used: Heaton, Taylor, Nakamba, Barkley, Engels, El Mohamady. Booked: Luiz. Manager: Dean Smith 8. FULHAM (4-2-3-1): Areola 6; Tete 7, Andersen 6.5, Tosin 6, Aina 6; Reed 6.5, Lemina 6.5 (Onomah 83); Reid 6.5, Loftus-Cheek 6 (Maja 83), Lookman 6 (Cavaleiro 47, 6); Mitrovic 7. Subs not used: Ream, Bryan, Zambo, Kongolo, Ramirez, Robinson. Booked: Andersen, Reid. Manager: Scott Parker 6.5. Referee: Andy Madley 6.5.