Fulham 1-1 Spurs

Our interest in this season’s Carabao Cup ended at the first hurdle on Tuesday evening as we lost on penalties to Fulham after a 1-1 draw at Craven Cottage.

After Richarlison had scored his first goal of the season to cancel out Micky van de Ven’s first-half own goal, neither side could find a winner in 90 minutes so penalties were required to settle the tie, with Davinson Sanchez the only player not to convert from 12 yards as the Cottagers won 5-3 on spot-kicks in this second round clash.

The early stages of the match were fairly low-key and lacked the edge one might expect from a London derby cup tie with the only half-chance in the opening minutes coming from Rodrigo Muniz’s header into the side-netting.

But it was the hosts who scored first on 19 minutes, when Tom Cairney drove a low ball into the box from the left which evaded Harrison Reed but took a huge deflection off the back of van de Ven’s heel and looped over Fraser Forster into the net.

Neither side created too much in attacking areas in the first period, although Forster kept out another two efforts from Muniz, the second on the stroke of half-time particularly impressive as he got down quickly to his right to push away the striker’s downward header. A few minutes earlier, Ivan Perisic had struck a free-kick into the Fulham wall with our only real chance of note before the interval.

There was a different feel to the contest after the break though, with more intent to our play and within the opening minutes Richarlison and Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg both went close before the former did indeed level the scores on 56 minutes. Perisic delivered a lovely cross from the left and the Brazil international nodded in at the far post. It came, bizarrely, while Fulham were down to 10 as Kenny Tete had raced back into the dressing room to change his boots.

We had a lucky escape on 65 minutes when Bobby De Cordova-Reid sliced wide when through on goal before Sanchez produced a superb block to prevent Harry Wilson from scoring shortly after.

At the other end, Manor Solomon tested Marek Rodak with a lovely curling effort but the goalkeeper pushed it away at full stretch and substitute Dane Scarlett just couldn’t turn home the rebound, while Forster made another vital stop in the 90^th minute to deny Wilson from close range and Raul Jimenez headed over from six yards out deep in stoppage time.

And so it went straight to penalties, Fulham going first with Andreas Pereira scoring before Heung-Min Son squeezed his spot-kick past Rodak. Jimenez rolled his penalty down the middle for 2-1, Dejan Kulusevski converted his with aplomb, Wilson cracked home off the crossbar before the first miss came as Rodak kept out Sanchez’s penalty.

Joao Palhinha sent Forster the wrong way for 4-2 and James Maddison kept us in the tie as he blasted home but Tete stepped up to send Fulham through 5-3 on penalties.

Team news saw Ange Postecoglou make nine changes to the team that started Saturday's league win at Bournemouth, with only van de Ven and Richarlison keeping their places. That meant a full debut for Solomon against his former club while Giovani Lo Celso was back in the starting line-up for the first time since January, 2021. Ben Davies captained the team.