Craven Cottage Newsround

Well it all played out as you might have expected it to. Close first half, lower league side ‘up for it’, squander very good chance (Hume six yards out, leans back, in space (is that a Haiku?)), then better team take lead, flurry of goals, back to Fulham for replay.

Word is (and Coleman suggested this) that Leicester played very well, but Fulham were there too, sporting a young defence that included a debut making Elliot Omosuzi at right back, Ian Pearce and Carlos Bocanegra up the middle, and Liam Rosenior at left back. Jan Lastuvka was in goal.

The latter appears to be the subject of some consternation among the Fulham support, but I still haven’t seen convincing evidence either way on him. He appeared to make a good attempt on the Leicester first, a good header that he got a hand to but that flicked down off the bar. The late equaliser was a strange goal, Cadamarteri’s shot right into the top corner and Lastuvka not there in time. It might be that he could’ve anticipated this a little better, with the winger (who had just embarrassed Omosuzi’s attempt to shepherd the ball out of play) broke in Lastuvka might have shaded to his near post, and certainly Cadamarteri’s shot wasn’t hit hard… but it’s hard to judge these things. Whenever we see a goal that looks half-soft it’s the keeper we think of, and perhaps this is right on this occasion. The good news is that Antti Niemi will be back soon.

Elsewhere, the Brown and Volz partnership appeared to grow, with match of the day showing two killer through-balls from Brown (one that saw Routledge beat the ‘keeper but without keeping control, the other setting McBride through for the opener, the American clipping the ball firmly inside the near post) and a piledriver from Volz to make it 2-1. At this rate we’re not going to need midfield reinforcements for the forseeable future, as these two are doing it all. Omosuzi had his moments (he looked good when I saw him in the reserves the other week) and Pearce went off injured. This brought Zakuani in, which gave the back four an average age of not much at all.

Still, we’d expect to win the replay. Annoying that it’s another game to wear out the players, and more money to conjure from nowhere to watch the team, but c’est la vie. So yeah, good enough really, and as Sheffield Utd will agree, it could have been so much worse.