Fulham will look back at this one with that hollow, familiar feeling that comes when the performance is there, the control is there, the chances are there, and the points still walk out of the door wearing someone else’s colours.
Everton left Craven Cottage with a 2-1 win that felt like a classic Premier League flip of the script: Fulham dazzling and wasteful before the interval, Everton stubborn and second-half sharp enough to turn a bad afternoon into a brilliant away day. It was, in every sense, a game of two halves.
The decisive moments arrived late. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall levelled on 75 minutes, and with Fulham wobbling, the winner followed eight minutes later when Bernd Leno’s own goal completed the turnaround. It needed a VAR check amid appeals that the goalkeeper had been impeded, but the goal stood, and Everton’s travelling support celebrated the kind of smash-and-grab that can power a season.
For Fulham, the frustration was not that they lost a tight match. It was that they should never have let it become tight in the first place.
Marco Silva’s side were terrific in the first half. The tempo was high, the passing had bite, and the movement between the lines was exactly what you want from a team with European ambitions. They pressed Everton’s build-up, sprang forward in numbers, and repeatedly found the spaces either side of Everton’s midfield screen. Everton looked a fraction slow to second balls and a touch anxious whenever Fulham broke the first line.
The opening goal summed up Fulham’s front-foot intent. A sharp move down the right ended with a dangerous ball whipped across the six-yard area, and Vitalii Mykolenko, stretching to prevent a tap-in, could only divert it into his own net after 18 minutes. It was harsh on the full-back, but it was also a reward for Fulham’s early dominance.
And they should have made it hurt.
Twice, Fulham struck the woodwork in the first half, the ball thudding off the bar and leaving a stadium collectively holding its head in its hands. On another day, those moments become the start of a rout; here, they became the warning flares Everton survived. Fulham were much the better side, creating the sort of chances that suggest a game could have been out of sight by the interval, but the finishing didn’t match the football.
That has been the recurring flaw in Fulham’s season. They can play. They can outplay teams, sometimes comfortably. But they don’t always kill matches when they have opponents on the ropes, and the Premier League punishes that like it’s written into the rules of the universe.
Everton, for their part, were relieved just to reach the break only one down. Their best first-half moments came in short bursts rather than sustained pressure, and with David Moyes serving a touchline ban, responsibility fell to his assistants in the technical area to drive the messaging and manage the in-game tweaks. Everton’s instructions after the interval were clear in the performance: be braver in duels, be quicker to second balls, and turn Fulham around more often rather than letting them settle into passing patterns.
Then came the second half, and with it, a shift that Everton supporters have started to recognise, especially away from home. The Toffees returned with more aggression in the press, more directness in their forward play, and a clearer plan to force Fulham’s back line into uncomfortable clearances rather than allowing them to build cleanly.
Everton were not suddenly a different team, but they were a more assertive one. They squeezed Fulham’s wide outlets, began to win the second ball more regularly, and started to build pressure through set plays and sustained spells in the final third. The game didn’t immediately swing, but you could feel Fulham’s grip loosening. Passes that had been crisp became cautious. Runs that had been constant became sporadic. The drop-off was striking.
Fulham still had moments. They still carried a threat when they broke quickly, and there were spells where you expected them to find the second goal that would settle everything. But the conviction in front of goal wasn’t there, and as the minutes ticked away, the match began to look like the kind of afternoon where missed chances don’t just sting, they boomerang.
Everton’s equaliser arrived with 15 minutes to go, and it was a goal that embodied their second-half improvement. Mykolenko broke free down the left and picked out Dewsbury-Hall, whose finish had just enough on it to slip through Leno and make it 1-1. Fulham had been warned. The atmosphere changed instantly. A match that had felt comfortable for the home side now had a pulse of panic running through it.
Eight minutes later, Everton completed the turnaround in messy, brutal fashion, the sort of goal that makes managers love the game and opposition fans hate it. Dewsbury-Hall swung in a dangerous corner and Leno, pinned on his line in the crowd, could only paw it into his own net. Fulham protested, the moment was checked, but the goal stood and Everton suddenly had the lead.
From there, Everton did what well-drilled away sides do. They slowed the game, managed the corners, made Fulham chase, and defended their box with the kind of stubbornness this unbeaten run on the road has been built on.
The wider themes were impossible to ignore.
For Everton, it was proof again of their resilience and their knack for grinding out results away from home. It also underlined the shape of Moyes’ Everton at the moment: hard to hurt, comfortable suffering, and always alive to the moment when a match can be stolen.
For Fulham, it was the same story told in a new accent. The football in the first half was excellent, arguably some of their best attacking play in weeks, but the inability to turn superiority into a decisive lead has haunted them too often. When you hit the bar twice, dominate the rhythm, and still go in only 1-0 up, you’re leaving the door ajar. In the second half, Fulham didn’t just leave it ajar, they watched Everton walk straight through it.
A game of two halves, yes. But also a game of one lesson Fulham keep learning the hard way: chances missed are not neutral, they’re future problems.
Manager quotes
David Moyes, watching from the stands due to his touchline ban, pointed straight to Everton’s survival instincts at the break and the shift in their performance after half-time. “We did well to make sure it was only 1-0 at half-time and we played much better in the second half,” he said.
Moyes also framed the win as part of a bigger push, insisting Everton should aim higher than simply looking over their shoulder. “I don’t want to come in here and say we’re trying to avoid relegation. I don’t want to do that because Everton have had too much bad news and bad publicity, so I’d rather come in here and say we’re having a go at Europe,” he said. “You might laugh at me in a few weeks’ time and say, ‘How stupid was I’, but I’d rather be positive and try to make the players know that is what I want.”
Marco Silva’s view was the mirror image, and it came with the sting of knowing how dominant his side had been before the interval. “We should have four more goals,” he said. “The game should be over at half-time. The number of chances we created, we have to blame ourselves.”
Silva also nailed the turning point as Fulham’s second-half drop in aggression and purpose. “Second half, we stopped doing the right things. We expected a reaction from Everton,” he said, a line that felt like both analysis and accusation, because Fulham didn’t just lose control of the scoreline, they surrendered control of the match.
