Chelsea’s visit to Craven Cottage ended in a 2-1 defeat as Fulham capitalised on a first-half red card to extend the Blues’ poor run. Marc Cucurella was dismissed for hauling Harry Wilson down as the last man, a decision that left Peter Bankes with little choice and handed Fulham the numerical advantage.<\/p>\n
VAR intervened late in the first half to rule out Harry Wilson’s stoppage-time strike for a narrow offside, denying Fulham what would have been a first-half lead. Early in the second half Ra\u00fal Jim\u00e9nez made no mistake, heading Sander Berge’s delivery into the near post to open the scoring and undo Chelsea’s defensive plan.<\/p>\n
Chelsea responded through Liam Delap, who reacted fastest to a corner after Antonee Robinson’s attempted clearance struck the back post. Delap had earlier seen a dinked chance brilliantly kept out by Bernd Leno but made no mistake with the rebound, offering Chelsea hope despite their disadvantage.<\/p>\n
Fulham restored their lead nine minutes from time when Wilson’s deflected effort found the bottom corner. That goal proved decisive as Chelsea could not force an equaliser in the closing stages.<\/p>\n
There were several notable individual contributions. Andrey Santos struck the crossbar with the ball bouncing off his shoulder on the goal-line from a corner, while Mois\u00e9s Caicedo had an effort cleared off the line. Robert S\u00e1nchez got a hand to Jim\u00e9nez’s header but should perhaps have done better. Liam Delap was a bright spot for Chelsea in a difficult afternoon, combining hold-up play with a clinical finish.<\/p>\n
The sending off represented the fifth Premier League red card of the season for Chelsea and left the side with an uphill task at Craven Cottage. VAR provided a brief reprieve when Wilson’s first-half strike was ruled out, but Fulham ultimately prevailed. The result handed Fulham three points and left Chelsea to reflect on discipline and defensive lapses as they seek to arrest a troubling run of results. Subs used and individual ratings reflected the altered pattern of the match as the contest was shaped by that pivotal first-half moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cucurella sent off; Chelsea fall 2-1 at Fulham. Delap levelled before Wilson’s late deflected winner<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5825,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,713,172],"tags":[944,1089,319],"class_list":["post-5826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-fulham","category-epl","tag-andrey-santos","tag-chelsea-struggles","tag-cole-palmer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}