Fulham sink closer to drop as Nketiah steals last-gasp point
The blows keep coming for Fulham. Scott Parker often compares his team to a willing boxer, saying that they will “put the gloves back on” after an agonising draw, but even he must accept that a Premier League knockout blow will be landing soon.
Last week, it was Adama Traore’s stoppage-time winner that denied Fulham a point.
This time, it was a 97th-minute equaliser from Arsenal’s Eddie Nketiah that denied them two. Brutal moments in a punishing season, with Fulham now six points from safety having played one more game than Burnley.
“We were so close,” Parker said. “It’s painful. I am gutted. The last two weeks have been a real kick. But, as always, we wake up tomorrow morning, put the gloves back on and we go again. I know where we are falling short, but there is also a group of players that can win games. We will keep going.”
Parker’s belief in his players remains strong, while their belief in him seems to be strong, too. It is the final touch of quality that is missing. They defended so well for so long against Arsenal, building a white wall on the edge of their penalty area, but it crumbled with just seconds remaining.
If, or indeed when, Fulham are relegated, they will look back on these past two weeks as perhaps the most cruel of their season. Josh Maja’s second-half penalty had given them hope, until Nketiah found a way through the bodies and tapped in at the back post.
“I am immensely proud of the team,” Parker said. “They have given me everything. People will point fingers and say where we have failed, and rightly so, but there’s one area we have never failed and that’s desire and spirit. That’s the reason we still have a fighting chance.”
After such a thrilling victory over Slavia Prague in Europe on Thursday, this felt like yet another loss of momentum for Mikel Arteta’s side. It was far from the performance the Spaniard would have wanted or expected, even if they were the dominant side for most of the match.
The result confirmed what most Arsenal fans had already suspected: their domestic campaign is over. Everything rests on the Europa League, where they will meet Villarreal, and former head coach Unai Emery, in the semi-final and will hope to have Alexandre Lacazette available after he limped away with a hamstring problem.
“We totally deserved to win,” said Arteta, who insisted he did not know anything about the super league plan. On Lacazette, he added they would not know the extent of the problem until later this week.
Long before Arsenal’s desperation set in, they had started brightly.
Gabriel Martinelli twice went close to an early opener before Dani Ceballos found the net with a looping header shortly before the break.
To the naked eye there was no reason to question the goal, but the Var lines were soon being drawn and those lines revealed that Bukayo Saka’s big toe – and nothing more – had strayed into an offside position before Hector Bellerin’s cross.
There was more Var drama to come after half-time, when Gabriel Magalhaes brought down Fulham’s Mario Lemina in the penalty box. Just as Saka’s offside was by the finest of margins, so was this penalty ruling. Gabriel’s foot appeared to have just caught the end of Lemina’s, and that was enough.
Maja scored and Fulham then sat in. The onus was on Arsenal to break them down and they looked to have failed until the final minute when goalkeeper Mat Ryan went forward and got his head to Saka’s corner, flicking it to Ceballos. His shot was saved by Alphonse Areola before Nketiah, ever the predator, pounced on the rebound.