A familiar problem came back to haunt us yesterday: the lack of a goalscorer. In an otherwise excellent return to the Premier League, the fact that our top scorers with just five are Brian Brobbey and Enzo Le Fee (a midfielder who says he doesn’t score goals) - tells its own story.
Brobbey had an awful game here, although to be fair to him the service to him in a stop-start first half was non-existent, with the erratic and short-lived Jocelin Ta Bi in particular failing to get a decent ball into the box.
The turning point came in the early part of the second half when Romaine Mundle somehow managed to steer his shot wide when it looked easier to score when through on goal. Brobbey too had been guilty of passing up a golden opportunity when bizarrely electing to pass when gifted with a clear chance to shoot on the edge of the penalty area.
Those missed chances were to cost us dear when moments later veteran striker Raul Jimenez showed us how to finish by rising unchallenged to a corner and nodding effortlessly into the net. Worse was to follow when VAR awarded a penalty that 40,000 plus people had not seen which Jimenez again coolly dispatched.
We then huffed and puffed with the ineffective Brobbey withdrawn along with Angulo, who had blazed over from eight yards with the goal gaping. Le Fee offered some false hope with a well-taken penalty which was soon extinguished when Fulham scored a third with the inevitable breakaway as we chased the game.
In our third defeat in a row and second consecutive at home, the feel good factor felt in short supply here with the crowd starved of any excitement to get behind. Le Bris’ 40 point survival target suddenly looks very elusive indeed, with our lack of a cutting edge likely to cost us a top half finish.
As we begin to look towards the summer transfer window, one thing needs to top of Ghisolfi’s shopping list if we are to kick on next season: a striker.
ROEFS ON FULHAM
ROEFS ON FULHAM
ROEFS ON FULHAM
ROEFS ON FULHAM
TOOTHLESS
TOOTHLESS