(Football news) A few hours after the Toffees lost 2-1 to Luton Town, Marco Silva took charge of a 2-0 loss to Newcastle United on Saturday, pitting his cunning against his former team.
The Magpies’ performance at Craven Cottage left much to be desired, even with Newcastle enjoying a 14-day break from competitive activity before to an FA Cup fourth-round matchup with Fulham, who had just three days to recover from their EFL Cup defeat at the hands of Liverpool.
However, aside from Willian’s disallowed goal early in the second half, Silva’s lackluster team had the necessary cutting edge to overcome Martin Dubravka. Instead, Sean Longstaff and former Cottagers defender Dan Burn did the damage in West London.
However, Fulham were up in arms when Longstaff’s strike sailed into the net, having believed that the ball deflected into the midfielder’s path via the arm of Bruno Guimaraes, but the VAR room saw no reason to disallow the goal, and the wall of green shirts held firm against Fulham’s pitiful attacks in the second period.
Reeling from two cup exits in the space of a week, Fulham’s only focus between now and June is escaping an unlucky 13th place in the Premier League table, having seen their top-half aspirations take a significant hit over the winter period with four losses from five top-flight outings.
Silva’s men were full value for their terrific win over Arsenal on New Year’s Eve, but fixtures with Chelsea, Bournemouth, Burnley and Newcastle have ended with the Cottagers failing to glean one point or even score one goal. However, 18 of their 24 points this season – and 19 of their 28 goals – have been accrued at Craven Cottage.
Actually, Fulham hasn’t performed well away from home since crushing Everton at Goodison Park on the first weekend of the season. The Toffees supporters were inadvertently treated to even more Merseyside suffering when Luton visited for the FA Cup match this past weekend.
