LONDON // The good news for Fulham is that they still have to play Stoke City (away) and Crystal Palace (home), games against sides whose Premier League future is secure.
The bad news is that this was a game they seemed to have wrapped up, that could have propelled them out of the relegation zone, but from which, with a 2-0 lead with quarter of an hour remaining, they threw away two points. Hull, who also hit the woodwork twice as they scored two goals in that final 15 minutes, are now six points clear of the relegation zone and probably safe, but the rest of the relegation picture is as murky as ever.
The bottom two, Sunderland and Cardiff City, meet at the Stadium of Light today: the winner of that game would leapfrog Norwich City and move to fourth bottom.
Aston Villa, after their 4-1 defeat at Swansea City, are in danger, four points above Fulham, while West Bromwich Albion’s 1-0 victory over West Ham United leaves them five points clear of the relegation zone.
“We have to win the last two games,” said the Fulham manager Felix Magath. “We lost two points today but there’s a chance and we have to take it. We have to look at the situation as it is, stand up and show that we can play as well away as we do at home.”
The improvement that was hinted at under previous manager Rene Meulensteen, if not reflected in results, has been maintained under Magath, whose seven games have yielded 10 points and a sense that Fulham have played better than that.
It would be wrong, though, to draw too many conclusions from this game: both sides, essentially, played well for a 15-minute spell and in the other hour not an awful lot happened.
Given their situation, Fulham had seemed weirdly diffident in the first half but Magath made two substitutions at half time, bringing on Ashkan Dejagah and Kieran Richardson, and they made decisive contributions.
First Dejagah, picking the ball up on the right, cut onto his left foot and smacked in a drive from just outside the box to give Fulham a 55th-minute lead, then Richardson crossed from the left for Fernando Amorebieta to head into the bottom corner, the first goal scored by a Venezuelan in the Premier League.
The game seemed won, but with 15 minutes to go, the ball looped off Sascha Riether, was pushed against the bar by a back-pedalling David Stockdale and dropped for Nikica Jelavic to nod in. Sone Aluko then hit the bar and Ahmed Elmohamady hit the post, and Steve Harper at the other end made a fine save from Dejagah on the break.
But with three minutes remaining, Shane Long headed home an Aluko cross to earn Hull the point that probably sees them safe.
“If we hadn’t got it we’d have still been in it[relegation battle],” said the Hull manager Steve Bruce, “and we don’t want any of that.”
sports@thenational.ae
