Sixty years ago Fulham staged the first ever Football League Cup tie. Some fourteen years later they visited the Den for the first League match to be played on a Sunday.
Both games ended in defeat for the Whites, so perhaps it was tempting providence to reopen the 2019-20 EFL Championship programme at the weekend with Brentford’s mid-day visit to Craven Cottage.
Not being a Sky subscriber, I was pleased to have opted for the club’s own TV coverage. But it seemed strange in pre-match to be looking at the empty Hammersmith End, where I and so many other fans would normally have been sitting.
The proceedings commenced with all the players gathered round the centre circle to honour the victims of COVID-19 and to applaud the devoted service by NHS staff, carers and other key workers.
Then all the players took the knee to re-emphasise that Black Lives Matter.
Normally the crowd would have been able by a mixture of applause and respectful silence to participate in those ceremonies, which would have been followed by a roar of anticipation for the match. The lack of noise underscored the emptiness of the stadium, but overall I was pleased that the production team had not added a spurious soundtrack.
In my last blog I ventured to name Bobby Decordova-Reid as a potential Fulham hero, and in the 13th minute he created the game’s first real excitement - his left footed shot crashing against the bar after a neat passing movement involving Neeskens Kebano and Harrison Reed.
The first half produced some good football and it was encouraging to see Tim Ream and the defence in such confident form. But the game needed more goal-mouth action.
Fulham, as is their wont, showed more purpose after the interval, and Decordova-Reid had an early opportunity, which he squandered.
He atoned in the 53rd minute by cleverly stepping over the ball to allow Aleks Mitrovic a clear shot. The Serb found the net, but he had come from an offside position, so the goal was disallowed.
Neither Mitrovic nor the visitors’ top scoring Ollie Watkins made their expected impact and with the match drifting towards a goal-less finish both managers sent on substitutes.
Unfortunately, it was Brentford’s Emiliano Marcondes who made the difference, his low centre in the 88th minute being turned past Marek Rodak by Said Benrahma. Fulham abandoned caution in the hunt for an equaliser only for Benrahma to break away and release Marcondes, who doubled the score.
This set-back means that the two West London clubs could meet again in the play-offs before the season finally reaches its conclusion.
That would surely produce a more exhilarating match than we saw on Saturday. “The real intensity was lacking maybe ten or fifteen per cent,” commented Bees’ manager Thomas Frank. “You could feel that.”
Our next opponents Leeds United also struggled. Let us hope that Fulham regain the initiative on their visit there.
The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and unless specifically stated are not necessarily those of Hammersmith & Fulham Council.
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