Craven Cottage Newsround

Here.

He thought we did well in the first half, which I agree with, and that we lost it a bit in the second half.

He also mentions that we over-elaborated a bit going forwards in the first half, which is something we noticed too. Nobody was taking the shots that were on.  Anyway, on we go.  Even if we’d been in good form the most likely result was always a home win.

Relative to the other games we have left, this wasn’t ‘must win’ anyway. But it was disappointing to see last week’s good form snuffled out so tamely.

Newcastle lined up with three forwards and took the game to us. Early on Mark Viduka picked up the ball on the edge of the box; Brede Hangeland was some way away from him, and could not close him down. The Australian jinked inside and hit a low shot hard into the corner of Kasey Keller’s net. 1-0, exactly what we didn’t need.

The Fulham response was encouraging, with Bullard peppering the Newcastle goal with long-shots and knitting together a number of neat passing moves. Davies, Murphy, Johnson, McBride, all contributed to the slick attacks, even if none of these attacks led to any clear chances.

There was no end product. At no point did we extend Harper in the Newcastle goal, or even really get behind the Newcastle defence. We threatened to threaten but didn’t get past that.

In the second half whatever momentum we had built up just died away. Newcastle won all the 50-50 balls, everything seemed that half a yard too far away from a Fulham challenger. We couldn’t get the ball, we couldn’t keep the ball, and a comeback seemed unlikely.  Leon Andreasen, our rough diamond ball winner, was racing up and down the right wing.  Why sacrifice the one player who has done most to rectify the early season weaknesses?

In the end Michael Owen made sure of the win with a nice header from a free-kick. He had missed a similar chance in the first half and we weren’t going to get away with it twice.

Newcastle’s last two league wins are against Fulham, which tells its own story. No matter. We must focus on the games ahead, starting next week with Derby away. That really is a must win game.