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Anthony Taylor, the referee, needs his own article to describe how bad he was, booking seven players in a match that only saw one bad tackle worthy of a yellow.
Maynor Figueroa’s mistimed tackle and Andrew Johnson going into the crowd was the only ones the ref got right, yet he missed legitimate contenders with (Fulham) players going into the crowd and diving.
The first half was a hard one for Latics to get into, they were crowded out of everything and though we kept good possession at the back, we found it very hard to get the moving forward. Ben Watson and Hendry Thomas were especially isolated and having a really bad day.
That’s not to say we didn’t have opportunities, we did. Rodallega was making himself busy and had a low effort just go past the upright in the tenth minute, fifteen minutes later he really should have scored.
Ben Watson swung in the corner and got it over the first defender and saw Hugo swaning up to head the ball at goal, unluckily it came back off the post and a desperate block on Charles N’Zogbia shot saw the danger off for Fulham.
As the half wore on both teams were camped in midfield, but on the positive side for Latics we were coping with anything that Fulham had, especially as our visitors had dominated proceedings.
The second half saw us up the tempo slightly and we started to get a bit more joy, Hugo again was the one causing the trouble and after having a shot finely saved by the Cottager’s keeper he did make the breakthrough.
Hugo picked up the ball on the edge of the area and calmly lobbed his shot over the Fulham stopper into the goal. Charley and Hugo were getting a bit more ball no and both had efforts saved, but Fulham were starting to throw cation to the wind now and had a goal disallowed for offside.
Clint Dempsey decided to put the ball in the net anyway, but no yellow. They had a goal chalked off for handball; three players went over to berate the assistant referee, no yellow cards. Yet Di Santo spoke whilst running back to his own half and got booked.
Clint Dempsey twice swan dives in the area to try and con the referee into a penalty, luckily the official is not fooled, but neither received a yellow card. Andrew Johnson did get that large slice of luck his team needed though with a couple of minutes to go as his scuffed shot is deflected over the again impressive Ali Al Habsi and it makes the score 1-1.
No doubt Mark Hughes will think it was deserved, but it was a hard way to end up drawing. We now have to look forward to Arsenal before getting ourselves up for another crunch home game, this time Aston Villa will be the victims.
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John Pantsil
Hugo Rodallega
Diomansy Kamara
Moussa Dembele
