Fulham 3 - West Bromwich Albion 0

Summary:

Albion may have ended a few hoodoos in the last year or so, but their record at Fulham remains poor after their fine start to the season was brought crashing to an end. Injury forced Billy Jones to replace Steven Reid in an otherwise unchanged side.

The hosts gave new signing Dimitar Berbatov his first start after his move from Old Trafford, and he repaid their investment with two goals in the first half - one from the edge of the area and one from the penalty spot after Jones floored Alex Kačaniklić in the box. In between, a touch of the red mist saw Albion reduced to ten men thanks to Peter Odemwingie lashing out at Sascha Riether.

Steve Clarke made two changes at half time with Chris Brunt and Romelu Lukaku replacing Shane Long and Marc-Antoine Fortun?, and later brought on Markus Rosenberg for Claudio Yacob, but to no avail; the final slap in the face for Albion was seeing Villa reject Steve Sidwell put away Fulham's third in the last minute.

Albion drop to sixth, still a respectable position after four games despite a match to forget.

Paul Gainham:

Let's not panic it was not quite the proverbial clowns car but a wheel did come off today. I had a really poor seat right at the front of the Putney end so difficult to judge the overall format and structure but suffice to say mulumbu, yacob and morrison were poor, fortune non existent and odemwingie stupid.

Foster kept the score down, fulham thoroughly deserved their win, it could have easily been 5 or 6 nil. The performance was as bad as the 3-0 defeat here a few seasons ago.

The only plus point was Clarke tried to change it at the start of the 2nd half bringing lukaku and brunt on and later Rosenberg.

We had a bad day coming at some point and this was it.

WBAlex:

This was a disappointing display after the excellent start to the season.

Albion lacked penetration throughout and didn't really test the Fulham keeper. Fulham played well, and Martin Jol has got them into a good footballing unit, utilising a typical good Dutch positional sense, to exploit the extra player they had on the pitch. However, the turning point was Odemwingie's stupid and reckless kick for which he was rightly sent off. Everybody can make a mistake and I hope he realises the significance of this one and learns from it. Any potential penetration and goal threat seemed to be lost with his departure.

Having said that, Long and Fortune never looked dangerous. It would have been good to see Lukaku earlier. He has a load of energy but his service was mainly of the long ball variety.

• Foster 7 - without him, could have been worse
• Jones 6 - does add width going forward, but can only remember being dangerous once
• McCauley 6 - some timely interceptions and strong in the air
• Olsson 6 - see McCauley + kept Hangeland at bay
• Ridegwell 7 - competent and added good width going forward
• Yacob 6 - got some good tackles in. Good ball retention but wish we saw some more forward passes.
• Mulumbu 5 - poor by his standards. some sloppy passing.
• Fortune 5 - never a threat. Got closed down by Fulham defenders
• Morrison 6 - didn't produce many telling passes like he can. wonder if he was just pleased having a new contract.
• Odemwingie 3 - would have scored higher, but for his stupid blunder.
• Long 5 - Fulham defence had him well under control and lacking in creativity to make a goal chance.

• Lukaku 7 - physical presence and effort deserved more, but had to rely on long inaccurate balls.
• Brunt 6 - added some creativity
• Rosenberg 6 - had little time to show what he could do.