Fulham inflicted Liverpool with their second Premier League defeat of the season on Sunday afternoon at Craven Cottage, first away from Anfield.
Alexis Mac Allister blasted the table toppers ahead with a powerful strike from outside the box in the 14th minute, but some questionable defending from his teammates enabled Ryan Sessegnon (23′), Alex Iwobi (32′) and Rodrigo Muniz (37′) to give the hosts a two-goal lead to take to the break. Liverpool substitute Luis Diaz eventually crowned a somewhat better performance from the visitors in the second half in the 72nd minute, but it proved too little, too late.
Teams
Harry Wilson was unable to face his former club, joining Arsenal loanee Reiss Nelson on the sidelines.
With Bernd Leno in goal, Timothy Castagne and Antonee Robinson flanked centre-backs Joachim Andersen and Calvin Bassey in defence, shielded by the duo of Sander Berge and Sasa Lukic. Andreas Pereira played in advanced midfield role, with Sessegnon and Iwobi attacking from the flanks, and Muniz as the central attacking figure.
For Liverpool, there was still no Alisson Becker in goal – the Brazilian suffered a head injury during the international break and was obviously deemed not ready to return. Defenders Trent Alexander-Arnold and Joe Gomez were out as well, and Conor Bradley had returned to training in time to make the bench.
Caomhin Kelleher deputized for Alisson between the posts, and Curtis Jones stepped into the right-back role, flanking Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate together with Andy Robertson on the left. Ryan Gravenberch stood in front of the back line as the No. 6, with Mac Allister closest to him and Dominik Szoboszlai roaming further up. Mohamed Salah attacked from the right, Cody Gakpo from the left, and Diogo Jota through the middle.
Match recap
It was clear from the start this would be a difficult match for Liverpool, with Fulham looking very motivated and prepared to fight for the ball in all areas of the pitch. An extremely nonchalant moment from Konate gave the home side an early chance which they failed to take, and it felt as if they were being punished in the 14th minute when Mac Allister found a little space at around 20 yards and fired past Leno. It was probably the only moment when Berge didn’t do his job properly and Bassey’s step forward to block came too late. It was, however, a lovely strike from the Argentina international and there was nothing Leno could do about it.
But Marco Silva’s men rallied quickly, and only nine minutes later, a cross from Robinson from the right was dealt with poorly by Jones which enabled Sessegnon to pounce from close range, with Van Dijk not doing enough to get there first.
In the 32nd minute, it was Robertson’s turn to make a costly error as his unbelievably unwise horizontal pass found Iwobi unmarked just outside the box. The Reds’ defence closed ranks quickly enough to block the initial shot, but the rebound was poked back to Iwobi by the hapless Robertson again, and just to cap things off, it was the Scotland captain’s attempted block that diverted the second shot out of Kelleher’s reach.
And another five minutes later, the Cottagers delivered yet another blow, with Van Dijk being outpowered uncharacteristically easily by Muniz, resulting in the Liverpool captain’s attempted clearance actually setting the Fulham striker perfectly. Van Dijk tried to recover, but it was too late as Muniz slid the ball beneath Kelleher and into the net.
Liverpool have had a few poor performances this season, resulting in their losses to Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League, as well as their Carabao Cup final defeat to Newcastle, but the opening 45 minutes at Craven Cottage were arguably the worst. All of their defenders had made big mistakes, Gravenberch and Mac Allister – apart from that moment of inspiration in the 14th minute – couldn’t get their team going from midfield, Szoboszlai was very poor, and while Gakpo tried very hard, the ball rarely went where he wanted it to and Fulham defended his flank well. In such circumstances, Jota and Salah needed to drop deeper to help with organizing attacks, but they mostly didn’t do so and were barely involved. Particularly Salah.
Arne Slot’s team looked much better in the second half, especially after Szoboszlai and Gakpo made way for ex-Fulham man Harvey Elliott and Luis Diaz. Though Elliott managed to push the ball forward a lot more, it was Diaz who made the biggest difference. His trickery and movement constantly gave the Fulham defence trouble, but the goal would not come before Slot made an interesting change by introducing the recovered Bradley instead of Konate, with Jones moving into midfield and Gravenberch dropping to defence alongside Van Dijk.
Five minutes after coming on, Bradley made a fine run through the middle and slipped the ball to Diaz, whose skillful turn was too quick for Andersen to react and the Colombian poked past Leno to make the final 20 minutes of the match highly tense.
Between that moment and the final whistle, Leno was called into action to save a Jones header, Diaz unsuccessfully claimed for a penalty, Elliott hit the crossbar from 10 yards, substitute Federico Chiesa shot straight at Leno, and Elliott fired too tamely from inside the box to trouble the Fulham ‘keeper.
Fulham also had a good chance to get a fourth goal, but Kelleher got down well to deny substitute Harrison Reed from 20 yards.
Blues help Reds title push
In an interesting set of events, Liverpool’s city rivals Everton helped their neighbours lessen the pain of this defeat in terms of the Premier League title race, holding second-placed Arsenal to a 1-1 draw the previous day. With seven rounds to go, Liverpool’s lead over the Gunners is thus reduced from 12 to 11 points, and it obviously could’ve been nine.
The gap is still significantly wide, and at this point, not many will be questioning Liverpool winning the title eventually. However, there’s no hiding from the fact that things aren’t going very well for the Merseysiders at the moment. For Liverpool, equaling Manchester United’s 20-title record will have been a priority from the start of the season, but the early Champions League exit and the Carabao Cup final loss will still have hurt them mentally. The fact is, they’ve now lost three of their last four matches in all competitions, and Slot will surely deem the state of things unacceptable.
The first opportunity to start making things right will come on Saturday, when Liverpool welcome West Ham to Anfield.
Meanwhile, it’s a fully deserved victory for Fulham against the league leaders, and Silva will be proud of the way his players fought and performed overall. With England set to have five teams in the Champions League next season, those who finish in the top seven are likely to make it into the continental competitions, and the Cottagers are surely aiming to be there.
Beating Liverpool is, of course, a great feat – only Nottingham Forest had done it – but the fight for the European spots will be a fierce one. Fulham are currently eighth with 48 points, two less than seven-placed Newcastle, but the Magpies have two matches in hand and will have a great chance to climb further up on Monday, when they face relegation-battlers Leicester City.
