West Bromwich Albion travelled down to the capital on Friday, as Fulham fans eagerly awaited the biggest challenge of the season so far. Yet, the Baggies, who came into this game in third- were disposed with relative ease following another clinic from everyone’s favourite Serb.
There aren’t enough words in the dictionary to describe how much I love Aleksandar Mitrovic. He is a joke of a player and just looks like he gets better each week. He has 18 goals from 15 games- which is completely ridiculous. In that period of time between our game yesterday finishing and the 3pm kick-offs getting underway he had more goals himself than half the teams in the league had managed to score.
He saw a Brentford player break the goalscoring record last season and took it personally, in the best way he knows how. He is the best out and out striker I’ve seen at the club and his special connection with the fans ramps him further up my list of all-time favourite players.
The game itself was reasonably comfortable, and I never thought we looked too out of our depth. Mitro opened the scoring with a penalty, which is something I am always glad to see happen. It seems as if he has broken his penalty hoodoo (he has scored his last 3) and as a club, penalties aren’t something we need ‘fear’ anymore. That said, if I were a West Brom fan I’d feel aggrieved by the decision to award the penalty. Those sorts of call can go either way and there’ll always be fans who lose out.
Mitro grabbed his second following some woeful stuff at the back from West Brom. Never mind the fact it’s Halloween, for Robert Snodgrass the sight of seeing the weak back-pass that he had intended for Sam Johnstone being snaffled up by Mitrovic will be enough to keep him up all night.
West Brom had Darnell Furlong sent off with 20 minutes to go, again- a tight decision, but if you are going to attempt a tackle like that it has to be spot on in order to escape punishment. However, we also had a red card in our midst. With just five minutes to go, Tosin was sent off for a clumsy challenge on Grady Diangana. It was needless, especially with the score at 3-0. But it is the sort of error that he will learn from as he continues to develop. This now begs the question of who will start alongside Ream on Wednesday? I think the three main contenders have to be Mawson, Hector and Denis Odoi. My preferred pick from the three would be Mawson, however I fully understand shouts for Odoi to drop into centre-back as Kenny Tete is reintroduced to the side.
I just feel like we need to start seeing some form of return on Alfie’s transfer fee before it is too late. That said, Odoi is the one who is match sharp and he hasn’t performed badly at all during Tete’s absence so he’d rightly feel hard done by if he were to be benched against Blackburn.
It was also nice to see Fabio Carvalho back in the mix, even if it was only a cameo appearance. He is back from a long lay-off, so may take time to get back to his previous best but he definitely provides us with a different outlet when available and will be undoubtedly crucial in the months to come.
But the man of the moment is undoubtedly Mitro, and he completed his hat-trick as the game was heading to its close, smashing the ball in from a few yards out. I am going to say it again. 18 goals in 15 games. That figure is ridiculously impressive by itself but sounds even more so when you discover that he has only scored half our goals this season.
We are Fulham, and we are coming.
Come on you Whites!
