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Portsmouth 0 Fulham 1 Mohamed Al Fayed, the Fulham chairman, is reported to have promised hampers containing Viagra to the players if they stayed in the Barclays Premier League. After this, the manufacturer of the erectile dysfunction medication may want to consider using Fulham’s great escape in its marketing. If it can rescue Fulham, it can surely keep anything up.Fulham looked powerless to save themselves six matches ago, but with impeccable timing they have overcome their notorious impotence on their travels, winning three away matches in a row after failing to take three points on an opposing team’s ground in the previous 19 months. Danny Murphy’s goal after 76 minutes at Fratton Park yesterday earned a fourth victory in five matches. Al Fayed will see the outcome as vindication of his decision to replace Lawrie Sanchez as manager in December with Roy Hodgson, whose faith in a more sophisticated style than that espoused by Sanchez has been rewarded. “We left it late and gave ourselves a mountain to climb, but we had quite a long spell when we have played well,” Hodgson said. “It’s been a really good four months. I can take a lot of satisfaction from the job that everybody has done, but at the same time I have a lot of sympathy for the two managers who have been relegated. Alex McLeish and Steve Coppell are friends of mine, both excellent managers, and having had a long time to contemplate that it might be us, I know exactly how they are feeling.” It helped yesterday that Fulham were facing a Portsmouth team who have failed to score in ten of their 19 home league matches and who had an eye on Saturday’s FA Cup Final against Cardiff City. However, Harry Redknapp fielded a strong-looking team, resting only Papa Bouba Diop, Sol Campbell and David James, who picked up a host of supporters’ player-of-the-season awards before kick-off. Jamie Ashdown, James’s understudy, made the best save of the first half, from Simon Davies’s half-volley after four minutes, but it was an isolated attack. Fulham’s early urgency did not translate into fluency and they posed little threat for the remainder of the first half. Portsmouth did not want to succumb meekly in front of their supporters and John Utaka, Jermain Defoe and Pedro Mendes went close. The news at the interval was not encouraging for Fulham fans, with Birmingham and Reading ahead, but at least their team began to take the initiative in the second half. Murphy headed Davies’s cross straight at Ashdown, while a corner taken by Jimmy Bullard led to a brief bout of head tennis in Portsmouth’s six-yard area. Finally, Bullard swung in a free kick and Murphy escaped his marker to head home. “I’m not even supposed to be going into the box,” Murphy said. “I don’t know what I was doing going in, but I just fancied it.” Otherwise, the game plan worked to perfection. “We kept trying to do the right things, hoping we would get our reward,” Hodgson said. “I was worried we would go gung-ho too early in the game, but I always thought that if they didn’t score, something would come our way. So I could stay calm, but I wasn’t in the last eight minutes.” Al Fayed joined his players on the field to enjoy the applause of the supporters and he may receive a greater reward when the announcement of the extra Uefa Cup Fair Play place is made tomorrow, as his team received no bookings in the match and so closed in on Manchester City. Portsmouth (4-4-2): J Ashdown 6 G Johnson 6 S Distin 6 N Pamarot 6 H Hreidarsson 6 J Utaka 5 L Diarra 6 P Mendes 5 N Kranjcar 6 Kanu 3 J Defoe 5 Substitutes: S Davis (for Mendes, 74min), M Baros (for Kanu, 74), S Muntari (for Diarra, 84). Not used: A Begovic, M Wilson. Fulham (4-4-2): K Keller 6 P Stalteri 6 A Hughes 6 B Hangeland 6 P Konchesky 6 S Davies 6 D Murphy 6 J Bullard 7 C Dempsey 5 D Kamara 5 B McBride 5 Substitutes: E Nevland (for Dempsey, 73min), L Andreasen (for Kamara, 85). Not used: A Warner, C Bocanegra, D Healy. Referee: M Clattenburg Attendance: 20,532 End-of-term report - for Fulham Season’s summary: Played ugly and lost, then more attractively and ultimately won under Roy Hodgson. How to improve: Get rid of dead wood. Player of season: Jimmy Bullard. |
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