Cottage Collapse
Second Half Horror Show Condems Toon To Heavy Defeat
At half time at Craven Cottage on Saturday everything was looking rosy after a commanding first half display saw Newcastle go in at the break leading 1-0 from a fabulous left footed Danny Guthrie strike.
However nothing at Newcastle ever seems to run quite to plan and after a second half defensive horror show Martin Jol's men ran out convincing 5-2 winners with American international Clint Dempsey hitting a hatrick and Danny Murphy and Bobby Zamora adding a penalty each.
Whilst there is no excuses for the defending you have to say the penalty they got 7 minutes into the second half really changed the game and got them back into it. The decision was absolutely scandalous from Lee Mason. Firstly I'm not convinced Santon's "challenge" on Duff was even a foul but even if it was it was clearly outside of the area.
I know referees have a tough time of it and I do feel sympathy for them when it comes to tough calls like offsides or balls crossing the line etc but I don't think there can be any excuses really for not seeing that a foul clearly happened outside the box - if he isn't sure then he can't give a penalty.
We will never know what would have happened had that not been given but the simple fact is goals change games and that goal certainly changed the game back into Fulham's favour no matter how Newcastle defended after that.
The only consolation for Newcastle in that second half was another fantastic goal from Hatem Ben Arfa. Whilst it was of course only a consolation it is further proof of his return to fitness and increasing contribution and positive influence on the team.
Definitely a result that just needs to be forgotten about and swept under the carpet pretty quickly although I am sure a lot of work and analysis will be done on the defending or lack of it this week in training with Pardew and his team.
Defeats at the weekend for Liverpool and Arsenal means that the sligh consolation is we stay in 6th but I suppose on the flip side of that there is a slight frustration that after leading 1-0 we have thrown away the opportunity to take advantage of those results.
This game was always going to be a tough one, as I said in the preview I think it was our first real test without Ba and Tiote and I think whilst all the talk has been about the loss of Ba this result maybe shows that Tiote is just as big a miss.
So yet another disasterous visit to the capital to add to the list, lets hope we can put things right when we head even further south next week to Brighton in the FA Cup.
