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Key events
67 min: Fulham substitution Shea Charles, signed from Southampton in the summer, replaces Oscar Bobb.
65 min: Chelsea substitutions Enzo Fernandez is booed onto the field – by the Fulham fans – as he replaces Romeo Lavia. Pep Chavarria comes on for Jorrel Hato.
Lavia was excellent, with the exception of one 1970s tackle on Calvin Bassey.
64 min Strange game, this, in that Chelsea have been quite brilliant at times yet they are still nowhere near safe.
63 min Joao Pedro endangers low-flying aircraft with a shot from distance.
61 min Oscar Bobb slaloms dangerously into the Chelsea area but is eventually crowded out. He’s had a promising game on the right wing, and there’s plenty to like about Fulham in attack.
59 min Hato (I think) is penalised for a farting around at a throw-in. The referee gives it to Fulham instead.
57 min “Ready to see your next West End show?” writes Broadway World. “Of course you are! Let BroadwayWorld and Ticketmaster be your guide to which plays and musicals are the most buzz-worthy this week. Check out the shows we recommend that you should snag tickets to this week!”
Buzz-worthy with a hyphen? I’m not having that.
Cuenca’s driven pass into the area was collected by Castagne, whose crisp low shot was saved by the diving Sanchez. He pushed it out rather than away, however, and Garcia reacted smartly to get his noggin on the loose ball. It flew into the ground and bounced slowly over Sanchez.
GOAL! Fulham 2-3 Chelsea (Garcia 54)
Gonzalo Garcia scores on his debut to give Fulham hope!
52 min Chelsea are almost in again. Hato gets the wrong side of the Fulham defence and tries to find Rogers with a square ball that is crucially cut out.
51 min Joao Pedro has been really, really good. Cole Palmer has been off the charts. When you consider everything he’s been through, this performance almost brings a lump to the throat.
Joao Pedro protected the ball on the left side of the area, waiting for Palmer to make a run on the outside. Eventually Joao Pedro reversed a perfectly weighted pass that allowed Palmer to slide a first-time shot through Leno’s legs. A brilliantly worked goal from two players who suffered the crushing disappointment of missing out on the World Cup.
GOAL! Fulham 1-3 Chelsea (Palmer 49)
Cole Palmer caps a performance of spine-tingling brilliance!
48 min The majestic Palmer slaloms past two players, then beats Robinson a second time before shaping a shot wide of the far post. He thought it got a deflection off Cuenca; the referee disagreed.
46 min Fulham get the second half under way.
Half-time reading
Half time: Fulham 1-2 Chelsea
A brilliant first half at Craven Cottage. It could easily be 3-3, but the actual scoreline is 2-1 to Chelsea. Joao Pedro gave them the lead after 30 seconds, Josh King equalised after a mistake from Robert Sanchez and Morgan Rogers restored Chelsea’s lead on his debut. Oh, and Cole Palmer was a joy from start to finish.
45 min Two minutes of added time.
44 min Palmer curls just wide from the edge of the area. To say he is on one would be quite the understatement.
42 min Cole Palmer has been utterly brilliant. The goal stemmed from him beating a defender through sleight of shoulder, then finding Lacroix in the area.
Maxence Lacroix had a mosey upfield in open play, and why not. He received a good pass from Palmer on the right side of the area, twisted past a defender and pulled an inviting ball across the face of goal. Rogers swept it into the net with abundant glee.
GOAL! Fulham 1-2 Chelsea (Rogers 41)
Morgan Rogers scores on his Chelsea debut.
40 min “Tigana was ‘ok’!” sniffs Richard Hirst. “Under him Fulham played the best football I’ve seen in my 65 years of following them. His team played in the way he had played – no gap.”
39 min Bassey hits a long-range shot that catches James right in the walloper. James somehow stays on his feet, although he does stagger around for a bit.
37 min “Josh King – a new name to me, I admit, I suspect he’s been around for a while,” says Charles Antaki. “Now I have him down as one of those footballers with a name which teasingly resists full spoonerisation: Kosh Jing sounds like it might work, but of course it doesn’t. See also the likes of Declan Rice, Luke Shaw and Harry Kane. Matty Cash remains the only true candidate, I think. And as for Crysensio Summerville, forget it.”
Don’t make me bring Rob Smyth into the conversation again.
36 min: Good save by Leno! A Chelsea corner ricochets off a couple of players and breaks to Lavia, whose close-range shot is crucially blocked by Leno.
35 min Colwill, on a yellow card, sends King flying with an arm across the collarbone. Nothing is given but he took a risk there.
33 min Rogers zips inside and has a shot blocked. The ball rolls across the edge of the area to James, who blooters a first-timer straight at Leno.
33 min “Remember Jean Tigana managed Fulham?” sniffs Niall Mullen. “He was ok, I think he got them promoted. But it got me thinking what is the biggest gap between how good a fella was as a player and how rubbish he was as a manager in the Premier League. Without much thinking my vote goes to Frank de Boer at Crystal Palace.”
It was only nine years ago mate. Too soon.
31 min: Just wide from Joao Pedro
Palmer slips down the right, away from two players, and clips a flat cross towards Joao Pedro 12 yards out. He slams a volley into the ground and this far wide of the near post.
Palmer’s performance has been the purest filth.
29 min The outstanding King wins another corner for Fulham, who are as rampant as Chelsea were earlier in the game.
Nothing comes of it but this has been such a fun game.
27 min The mood has changed at Craven Cottage. Bobb screws a low ball across the area towards Garcia, whose shot is blocked at close range by Acheampong. The chance was so enticing that he lost his balance slightly and staggered towards the ball like a tremulous virg- well, never mind.
24 min Sanchez has had a beast there. Sorry to say, it gets worse every time you see it.
King played a give-and-go with Castagne on the right, surged into the area and hit an early shot from the angle that beat Sanchez at the near post. Sanchez should have done better, in truth, but it’s a lovely moment for a fine young talent – especially after what happened at Stamford Bridge last season.
GOAL! Fulham 1-1 Chelsea (King 23)
Josh King equalises for Fulham!
22 min Fulham have had slightly more of the ball, 53%, so it’s not a battering by any means. But Chelsea look so good in transition.
Fulham are having a good spell right now. Another sustained attack ends with a 22-yarder from Berge that is blocked.
20 min Better from Fulham. King receives a good a angled pass pass on the half turn, moves into space and pings a shot from 22 yards that is slapped around the post a little unconvincingly by Sanchez.
19 min After another good press from Chelsea, Palmer has a shot blocked desperately by a couple of Fulham players.
18 min Hato beats two or three players on a long, winding run infield. Eventually he’s challenged but the ball keeps coming back at Fulham.
In the parlance of our time, Chelsea look really fackin good sunshine.
16 min Early days but Fulham do have some good attacking options on the bench, including Kevin and Rodrigo Muniz.
13 min “Third personing two minutes into the new MBM season?” sniffs Tim Woods. “Either you’ve just been reading Kevin Pietersen’s autobiography or the game has well and truly upped and left. (Although Tim Woods always enjoys the ‘taken as far as he can’ gag.)”
If I ever talk about myself in the third person without a jauntily raised eyebrow, you have permission to boot me straight in the teeth.
11 min A brilliant lobbed pass from Palmer releases Joao Pedro on the left side of the area. He tries to cut back inside and is excellently challenged by Bassey.
Moments later, Lavia sends Bassey into outer space and is booked. He did get a bit of the ball but the manner in which he wiped Bassey out invalidated that.
10 min Hato whacks a weird pass straight at his teammate Colwill in the Chelsea area. A game of pinball ensues before Fulham win a corner. It’s swung in and claimed by Sanchez.
8 min Chelsea look really good, particularly the front three of Palmer, Rogers and Joao Pedro.
Palmer dances round the houses and lifts a right-foot shot that is patted down by Leno.
7 min In other news, it took Cole Palmer 30 seconds of the 2026-27 season to equal his total of Premier League assists in 2025-26. The most peculiar of statgasms.
5 min Colwill lets the ball run under his feet, then compounds the error by wiping out Bobb and is booked.
4 min A neat short corner eventually leads to a stinging half-volley from James that is blocked. Chelsea are rampant.
4 min Rogers runs at a frazzled Fulham defence and yeehas a shot that deflects behind for a corner.
2 min Has Alvaro Arbeloa taken Fulham as far as he can?
Has Rob Smyth taken this gag as far as he can?
Joao Pedro, Chelsea’s new No9, has scored after 30 seconds. Cuenca’s driven ball out of defence was headed whence it came by one of the Chelsea centre-backs. Palmer slipped a simple* first-time pass through to Joao Pedro, who dinked the ball decisively over Leno.
* For him.
GOAL! Fulham 0-1 Chelsea (Joao Pedro 1)
Well that escalated quickly.
1 min Chelsea kick off from right to left as we watch.
Who’s ready for some hardcore Premier League football? It’s that or Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased).
Four of the big summer signings start tonight: Gonzalo Garcia and Cesar Palacios for Fulham, Morgan Rogers and Maxence Lacroix for Chelsea.
Billy Munday
After a season of struggle and regression, with two head coaches and two spells under a caretaker, there is cautious optimism that this campaign will bring something like stability. Much of that optimism centres around the appointment of Xabi Alonso, an elite manager with something to prove. There is also an expectation that the young players brought in as part of BlueCo’s £1.8bn splurge in recent years are beginning to come into their best years. There is no European football to complicate the schedule and a return to the Champions League by finishing in the top four or five would suffice for now. More importance will be placed on the domestic cups after a season without trophies.
Alonso’s squad is more rounded than what Enzo Maresca or Liam Rosenior had at their disposal. Maxence Lacroix and Morgan Rogers bring quality to positions where Chelsea were lacking it – at centre-back and out wide. Danny Welbeck and Jordan Henderson – the “uncs” as Tosin Adarabioyo has called them – will contribute as much off the pitch as on it. The signing of Marco Palestra, a specialist wing-back, suggests Alonso wants to be tactically flexible. He has used a back four and a back three in pre-season.
John Brewin
Marco Silva cutting the cord after five years by the river came as little surprise. If his time at Craven Cottage was successful in re-establishing Fulham as a Premier League club, he rarely concealed his ambitions to manage in European competition. He was frequently explicit in his disappointment that the club’s ownership did not meet him halfway by funding a stronger squad. Silva’s powers of rebadging and replenishing talent will be missed now that he has decamped to Benfica. Under him, Fulham played entertaining football, a collection of ugly ducklings showing their renewed worth for a club that, despite falling short of European qualification, looked upwards rather than downwards at the relegation battle. They were often a pleasure to watch, and ornery opposition for all-comers.
Álvaro Arbeloa is a very different type of appointment, with far less experience than his predecessor in frontline coaching terms, even if he arrives with Real Madrid on his CV. His arrival, though, has opened up a working relationship with the Spanish aristos, Gonzalo García and César Palacios arriving to work with a coach who helped them through the ranks in Madrid. By little coincidence, all three share the same agency as their representatives. There have been links with Endrick and Thiago Pitarch, two further young Real jewels, leading to a sense of Fulham becoming some form of Madrileño nursery, a Santiago Bernabéu on Thames. Should that play out, it would represent another sea change.
Team news
Fulham (4-2-3-1) Leno; Castagne, Bassey, Cuenca, Robinson; Iwobi, Berge; Bobb, King, Palacios; Garcia.
Subs: Lecomte, Tete, Reed, Rodrigo Muniz, Kevin, Charles, Sessegnon, Smith Rowe, De Fougerolles.
Chelsea (3-4-2-1) Sanchez; Acheampong, Lacroix, Colwill; Gusto, James, Lavia, Hato; Palmer, Rogers; Joao Pedro.
Subs: Penders, Barco, Pedro Neto, Fernandez, Bynoe-Gittens, Welbeck, Quendal, Chavarria, Estevao.
Referee John Brooks.
Jacob Steinberg
It is a necessary reset. Although it would be pushing it to say that Chelsea have switched from development centre to retirement home, even after the signings of Jordan Henderson and Danny Welbeck, there has been a clear shift in strategy this summer. Some grownups are in the room at last and, for Xabi Alonso, the hope is that bringing in more experience will help a squad still packed with youngsters show more composure when adversity strikes.
Discipline was a problem for Chelsea last season: they had 11 red cards in all competitions and a lot of the wounds were self-inflicted. Chelsea were impetuous, on the receiving end of too many bookings for dissent and prone to collapsing at the first sign of trouble. No wonder Alonso, who was the epitome of calm during his playing career, has focused on maintaining “emotional control” before opening his tenure as manager with Monday’s trip to Fulham.
It will be a test of Chelsea’s mentality. Craven Cottage has been the setting for some spectacular implosions during the BlueCo era, the path to two 2-1 victories for Fulham over their neighbours smoothed by João Félix earning a red card on his Chelsea debut in 2023 and by Marc Cucurella getting himself sent off after 22 minutes last season.
Preamble
Good evening and welcome to live coverage of Fulham v Chelsea at Craven Cottage. A west London derby, involving the last two managers of Real Madrid, should a solid entertainment option, especially as the alternatives on UK television include Street Cops: Catching the Yobs, Donnie Swaggart* and a repeat of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) in which Marty says his grave is being disturbed, and Jeff uncovers a plan to kidnap the heir to a fortune.
Álvaro Arbeloa and Xabi Alonso will surely last longer in SW6 than they did in Madrid, where a P45 was luzzed in their direction after roughly half a season each. Arbeloa’s task is to maintain the mid-table security that Marco Silva brought to Fulham, who have finished between 10th and 13th in the four seasons since they were promoted. If it goes really well, and he’s feeling frisky, Arbeloa might even take Fulham into Europe for the first time since 2011-12.
Qualifying for Europe is the bare minimum for Alonso, especially as Chelsea failed to achieve that last season. For the ninth richest club in the world to finish tenth domestically might be described in some cultures as sub-optimal. But in the short term, the lack of European football could be a blessing in disguise as Alonso tries to stabilise a club that has been all over the show in recent years.
With Alonso in charge, Chelsea have the potential to take a shortcut back towards the top of the Premier League. There’s an argument that, on paper, only Arsenal have a stronger squad. It’s time to see whether they are worth a damn on the pitch.
Kick off 8pm.
* Alas, this isn’t a mash-up of Donnie Darko, Sweeney Todd and Taggart.
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