Craven Cottage is generally considered to be a “good away”. The walk through Bishop’s Park from Putney Bridge tube. The river view. The genteel home support. It really was for Arsenal here, a victory to respond to that of Manchester City on Saturday and not in doubt from the early running when Mikel Arteta’s team made it plain that they would be operating on another level.
It has been a stellar season for Fulham – Marco Silva has overseen an unexpected push for European qualification – but they were abject during the first half, pulling up seats for eleven and watching Arsenal sweep into an unassailable lead.
“We’re gonna win the league,” the travelling fans chanted after Gabriel Martinelli had made it 2-0 on 26 minutes, applying the finish to a lovely box-to-box team move, Fulham chasing shadows. It was supposed to be one of a clutch of tricky away games for Arsenal over the run-in – the others being Liverpool, City and Newcastle. But it was nothing of the sort, their lead over City back up to five points.
Gabriel Magalhães scored the first; the insistently brilliant Martin Ødegaard the third and that was that by half-time, Arsenal en route to a fifth Premier League win on the spin, 15 goals scored during the sequence. Up in the stands Mick Jagger could smile. For him and his fellow Arsenal supporters there was only satisfaction. It was a nice touch from Fulham to play Start Me Up by the Rolling Stones at half-time. They were the most accommodating of hosts.
The day had begun with talk of a selection headache up front for Arteta, who was without the injured Eddie Nketiah. It eased when Leandro Trossard passed a fitness test to lead the line, albeit in the false way of the times. He excelled, supplying the assists for each of the goals, and there was to be the further tonic of Gabriel Jesus getting on as a 77th-minute substitute for his first football since the World Cup. He stands to be a key figure in the weeks ahead.
It was interesting to gauge the tone of Silva’s pre-match interview when he lamented the continued loss of João Palhinha to suspension and talked up Arsenal’s threats – their intensity, their proactivity, how they would do “lots of things we don’t like”. Silva feared the worst but he could not have foreseen his team’s first-half no-show. “We were on the pitch but in some moments it looked like we weren’t,” he said.
The numbers tell their own story about Fulham without Palhinha; it is now played four, lost four, goals against 12. Fulham put minimal pressure on the ball and a breakthrough goal for Arsenal quickly came to feel inevitable; even Fulham appeared braced for it.
It came in the 21st minute, Gabriel rising to head home from Trossard’s corner, shortly after Arsenal had the ball in the net only to be denied by an offside spot by the VAR. Granit Xhaka had released Martinelli up the left and, when he curled for the far corner, Bernd Leno pushed the ball out and into Antonee Robinson, who saw it bounce in off him.
Mercifully for Robinson, the VAR deemed that Martinelli had been fractionally in front of him on the other side when he began his run and, with the home crowd gleeful, the hope for them was that it would change the dynamic. Up until that point Fulham had been horribly passive.
It did not. Fulham would get worse, much worse over the remainder of a desperate first half for them, sleepwalking into Arsenal’s aggressive press, surrendering possession in dangerous areas, so soft in the duels, doing zero as an attacking force. It was as if Ødegaard was playing with his own ball while Bukayo Saka oozed strength and confidence, Robinson no match for him.
Even when Aaron Ramsdale passed the ball to Andreas Pereira on 42 minutes, the Fulham midfielder moved away from goal before sending a chip over the crossbar.
Gabriel’s goal was too easy, Fulham’s marking a shambles, but Arsenal’s second was a beauty, began by Saka’s close control with men around him on the right of his defensive third and fired by William Saliba’s long diagonal. Trossard got around his man to cross; Martinelli jumped at the far post whereas Robinson did not.
Robinson’s nightmare would continue when Trossard’s cross sailed over him in first-half stoppage-time, Ødegaard stepping inside to finish – Kenny Tete had initially given the ball away with a loose throw-in on halfway – and the only relief for Silva’s team was that the damage was not more scalding. Granit Xhaka had taken a heavy touch at 2-0 when clean through; Trossard shot wide after Robinson had been exposed and Leno saved from Martinelli amid statuesque Fulham defending.
Fulham did at least show their professional pride in the second half and they were unlucky not to score. Ramsdale saved smartly from Bobby Decordova-Reid and Tosin Adarabioyo, with Aleksandar Mitrovic heading a corner against the crossbar.
Arsenal moved down the gears but they still almost scored a fourth. Tete blocked from Martinelli after a slick counter; the substitute, Fábio Vieira, worked Leno and so did Jesus, after a give-and-go with Vieira. Jesus would beat the ground in frustration, Arsenal denied the cherry on top. Otherwise it had been a feast.
