The Tanner Report: Liverpool 0 Fulham 1
No doubt about it this victory will long be remembered as one of the great ones. It was as decisive as it was necessary.
We are still in the relegation zone but we have momentum, self-belief and a mean defence.
There were so many heroes in a white shirt but I’m going to start with a man in a smart light grey jacket – Scott Parker.
Even when it seemed an impossible to avoid relegation – less than a month ago we were 10 points adrift – he never abandoned his confidence that we can survive nor his football values.
We had little luck. A decision to chalk off a goal by Josh Maja in the game against Spurs led to a review and change of the penalisation of the unintentional handball.
That unlucky defeat meant that we had two tough games at Anfield and at home to Manchester City.
Fulham took the game to Liverpool in the first half.
A fine goal and strike by Marco Lemina was entirely deserved.
I expected a massive Liverpool come back in the second half and Sky analyst Jamie Carragher abandoned all pretence of being a neutral analyst to become a Liverpool cheerleader.
With Graeme Souness – another clear Liverpool devotee – in the studios there was a clear Liverpool bias.
Why could not Sky that redress that balance with ex-Fulham players like Steve Sidwell, Bobby Zamora or Tony Gale ?
However the onslaught never came and our boys played out the game defiantly and intelligently.
Joachim “Hans Christian” Andersen was immense at the heart of the Fulham defence not just blocking and intercepting magnificently but clearing the lines with passes reminiscent of Bobby Moore.
Harrison Reed, Alphonse Areola, Tosin, Ole Aina and Ade Lookman were all heroic too but it was a collective.
The pandemic lockdown has deprived us of going to our beloved Craven Cottage.
So it was all the more warming to receive text after text after the victory with typical Fulham humour referring to Scott Parker’s jacket.
One received from a noted economist analysed the number of points to survive and calculated this at 37.
We have some tough games still against both Manchester clubs, Arsenal and Chelsea but the majority of our games are against teams between 7-17th place.
We are not there yet but it’s looking good.
