Where do I start?
It’s hard to put into words the emotions that I’m sure we all felt during last night’s football. I work in a sports news room preparing various things for the news bulletins so at one point during the night I had the Manchester City v Liverpool game on one screen, the Aston Villa v Cardiff on another and had Gentleman Jim and Jamie Reid blasting in my ears. One thing that I love about working in a sports news room is that we are all sports fans, and when there is a night of football you can clearly tell who everyone supports. You get the various shouts of glee or frustration every so often, and no one bats an eyelid! On Saturday I let out a shout when Mitrovic put us in the lead and one colleague walked past and said, “Ah, Fulham scored, then?”
Too right they did.
Every game we play right now is crucial but last night was the night that I fully believed that Fulham would leapfrog Cardiff into second. Villa at home, after a poor defeat on Saturday, needed to prove to themselves and their supporters that they were still in with a chance of automatic promotion so needed to get a result against Cardiff. My cheer for Jack Grealish’s thunderbolt of a winner late in the day was nearly as loud as my cheer for Johansen’s goal for Fulham earlier on! The psychological torment that Cardiff had to cope with in the aftermath of missing two injury time penalties against Wolves on Friday night will have affected the team massively. It might have been different if Neil Warnock hadn’t have lost his own nerve in a big way after that game, as I honestly think that you need your manager to lead by example. And that display, Neil, was not what your players or fans needed to see.
While we can be thrilled to have overtaken Cardiff into second for the time being, we can’t get too ahead of ourselves. We could win all of our remaining games and still end up in the play offs if Cardiff beat Derby in their game in hand. We also have the very difficult task of heading into the lion’s den to take on high flying Millwall, and that’s after playing another West London Derby this weekend against Brentford. No game is straight forward in this league, but these are two very in form teams that we are taking on next. Things could still yet change.
For us the important thing is that we keep up this incredible run. It has been a glorious time as a Fulham fan, and that miserable defeat at Sunderland seems like a lifetime ago. We have to savour these moments as I have no idea when we will have a run like this again! The way the team is playing, the passion among them and supporters, the fantastic manager and backroom staff have all contributed to this perfect Fulham storm.
For now though, the boys will be focusing on Brentford and putting right the reverse fixture defeat at Griffin Park. We have four games left to fend off Cardiff, just four games left before a possible promotion party. This is history in the making.
#COYW
