Jack and Loz at the Cottage - Blog 296

Date: 5th January 2025

Opposition: Ipswich Town

Score: 2-2

Fulham goal scorer: Raúl Jimenez (pen) x2

Weather: very wintery

Atmosphere: very frustrated

MOTM: there is only one contender. Raúl Jimenez single-handedly rescued a point for Fulham with his desire, his grit, his hard-won experience and a penalty technique as cold as a frozen margarita. Shout outs to Harry Wilson for daring, determination and an unexpected flash of passion, and to Sasa Lukić for his incredible work rate.

Lunch: Wagamamas

For Fulham fans, 2024 peaked with our first victory at Stamford Bridge for 45 years. There were world-beating limbs at the time; there are goosebumps remembering it now. For the players too it was a euphoric occasion - Antonee’s picture of the half-dressed team, drunk on victory and each other with the caption a fan would have chosen summed up their feelings as well as ours.

But in the two disappointing home matches since it’s like we’ve been watching a different team. A hangover from the landmark win was almost forgivable against Bournemouth but they should have recovered and regrouped by now. What’s happened? Are they as tired as they look? Do they feel that a triumph so great means their work is done for a while? Are they resting on their laurels?

Against Ipswich, things started reasonably well. The Famous Five were back to the surprise of everyone except Marco, with last game’s super sub Tom Cairney in front of them. For a while, this seemed to work. As against Chelsea, the flexible back five allowed for some fluid transitions and Bassey was able to channel his inner winger, and Diop his inner striker.

Unfortunately though, the initial momentum faded, and Fulham struggled to build meaningful attacks.

We love Tom Cairney but his strength, as his career draws to a close, is his ability to calm chaos and bring composure to an overworked midfield. This worked really well against marauding Bournemouth. It did not work at all against stolid Ipswich who were happy to sit back and watch us pass the ball around while their well-organised defence confidently dealt with any rare Moments of danger.

There was no one to drive the game forward and there was only so much Raúl and Harry could do. Iwobi was unusually quiet and we didn’t have any other attacking players because we were playing 5 at the back. At home. Against Ipswich.

With apologies for anyone who has just signed up for anger management classes but we have to mention the referee at this point. Yet another match with yet another red card challenge that was waved away. Is there an unwritten rule whereby if Liverpool have a man sent off when you’re playing them, no other team suffers the same fate all season? And we won’t even mention the handball….

This week, Alex Iwobi described the Fulham team as a Brotherhood. Unfortunately, this all for one, one for all attitude was the downfall of the Famous Five who all forgot how to defend at the same time and gifted Ipswich a goal. Andersen (who was massively off the pace all match) made the initial mistake, Antonee couldn’t remedy it and Bassey was still channeling his inner winger (his inner non-league winner in fact) when he made the worst clearance of the season.

If the first half was a bit odd from all concerned, the second was bizarre. This was partly to do with the ref but also to some wild Moments from Marco in which he flung random players onto the pitch in ever-changing formations, hoping that something would stick.

We started the half by reverting to a back 4 although no one understood why Diop had been taken off instead of Andersen who certainly didn’t get any speedier as the game went on.

ESR has recovered from his knock although we are more and more convinced it was his confidence that took the hit. Even so, it’s affected his fitness and he wasn’t the impact sub we needed. However, he grew into the game and was involved in the build up to both penalties. The first was a strange period of play in which Muniz was kicked in the face (which the ref thought was fine) and Harry Wilson was brought down in the box after latching onto Emile’s pass, which the ref also thought was fine.

Fortunately, the VAR people, in one of the easiest decisions they will ever make, thought differently, reversed the decision and Raúl stepped up and did the rest.

Fulham were level for approximately one minute when the ref (apologies again, especially to Harry Wilson, for mentioning him so much) having failed to spot an obvious penalty at one end of the pitch apparently had no difficulty seeing a much more obscure one at the other.

By now, Fulham were playing 4-4-2 and time was running out. Adama was trying to make things happen, Leno made a stunning save and Josh King was channelling his inner ball boy. Whilst Raúl only converted the first penalty, he created the second one by sucking the Ipswich defenders in and drawing a foul when he had nowhere else to go. His second strike was even better than his first and crowned what was probably his best performance in a Fulham shirt.

As so often, extra time was fast and furious and fans were left wondering why the team couldn’t have played with all that energy for the last 90 minutes. Muniz, who was the epitome of Marco’s current buzzword “mature”, almost scored with the last kick of the game but it wasn’t to be.

The referee (sorry again, Harry) was simply appalling. We’ve already mentioned his most glaring errors but there were numerous small ones as well, some of them in our favour. There simply has to be a better of way of ensuring matches are competently refereed than letting the same people make mistakes week after week.

However, as bad as the ref was, he wasn’t the reason we didn’t win the game. We should have played better against a team that will probably be relegated. We can’t keep throwing points away.

Random musings:-

- More important than anything else on Sunday afternoon was the minute’s applause in memory of 13 year old Zach Little. This was faultlessly observed in all areas of the ground. We hope Zach’s family feel the love and support of the wider Fulham Family at this terrible time.

- It was great to see Rufus Brevett at half time

- Andreas joining in Muniz’s song while they were warming up was fantastic

- There was an interesting mix of long sleeves and gloves on the pitch. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Sasa won

- Sticking with sartorial matters, why is Emile’s shirt two sizes too big?

- Raúl is now the highest scoring Mexican in Premier League history

- Antonee is now the best male player in America. A nation of 360,000 million people!

- How can we be missing Sander Berge so much???

- The fact that the ref didn’t show Harry a card for screaming “you cheat!” in his face says it all about his incompetence.

So Fulham’s unbeaten run continues (just) but our quest for Europe probably doesn’t. 2025 hasn’t started like the year in which we’re going to eliminate all those silly mistakes.

But the transfer window is open and there’s still a very long way to go this season. We are Fulham Football Club. Anything can happen to us, and it probably will.