Fulham deserved more, but one nil is significant enough isn’t it?

Alan Hansen on Match of the Day gave credit to Fulham. And deservedly so. But at the same time he took away credit from Arsenal. He said on another day Fulham would have won, but Stoke never looked like winning against Utd. Which for me translates as Utd were solid, Arsenal by comparison were weaker. Fair assessment? Perhaps? But it is a very flawed way of thinking.

You cannot compare Fulham against Stoke. There is a big difference. Fulham play attractive football. Stoke do not. Theirs is an attritional based style, (keep-it-tight-and-hope-to-steal-goal). They do this every game. Even the most die-hard Stoke fan would agree with this. But Fulham often take the game to the opposition And don’t forget Fulham didn’t just beat us last season, they beat Utd as well at the Cottage.

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, I suppose. However, if I say Fulham play attractive football I must expand on this. At times, it felt as if Arsenal were getting a strong taste of their own medicine. There were neat one touches, angled passes and quality crossing to supplement that. On the other hand, we struggled to find any coherency in our own game.

Fulham managed 12 shots on target and a further 6 off target. Mannone made at least 5 good saves. Before kick-off I was critical of his inclusion. I suppose I owe him an apology. His outstanding performance won’t win him the number one jersey just yet. It does however, remind Almunia of his need to buck up his ideas.

 Almunia is more experienced and definitely better than Mannone but the Italian showed a great sense of determination. He was in no mood to be charitable to Fulham. Something Almunia must add to his game.

Commentators for the game were critical of Fabregas and Arshavin, two important components of our creative hub. We can go easy on Arsh as it was his first match back from injury. Can we really be harsh on Cesc though? 17 misplaced passes suggests we must. Then again this was down to Fulham’s general organisation, they seem to make us feel as if the game was about to end any minute soon. And they limited us to just 4 shots on target.

And it was Cesc who found the most important pass, setting up Van Persie for his goal. That was the only shot on goal for RVP, if we can disregard his awful free kick effort. Last week he was accused of being wasteful. This week he scores with his weaker foot, perhaps he must try this more often.

It looked a game destined to have a close scoreline for me. We reversed the same scoreline of last year’s encounter. And although we didn’t outplay Fulham as we thought, winning a game when we weren’t at our best, is proof that this team is learning to “grind-out” results.

By the way, Walcott wasn’t on the bench. Can someone please explain that to me? I thought that was a certainty. Even Vela made it on the bench!

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