Just quickly, because this is a small detail.
On Monday night, Fulham’s victory was largely attributed to Dimitar Berbatov’s composure and QPR’s individual errors – but accrediting the result just to those two factors has done a couple of people a disservice.
The penalty was what it was, and Christopher Samba is actually quite unlucky: he doesn’t know that Ashkan Dejagah is right behind him, and his trip on the Iranian is really just the product of an instinctive, yet unfortunate, reaction.
More importantly though, look again at Fulham’s second. That, too, has been chalked down as a Samba blunder, but watch how hard Damien Duff works to unsettle the centre-back and force him into losing possession.
Three stills from that incident:
Take nothing away from Berbatov, because his subsequent finish is wonderfully classy, but it’s irritating when a goal is described as being the product of an error, thereby taking credit away from a more subtle contribution from an attacking player.
Duff doesn’t do anything revelatory, but there are still plenty of players who would have just dropped back into a more passive position and allowed Samba to play a long-ball out of defence.
Additionally, if you must allocate blame, then surely Jose Bosingwa warrants a share of it for putting his teammate in difficulty in the first place – the safe back-pass would have been to Julio Cesar, and the poke to Samba is nothing more than an abdication of responsibility. Additionally, watch Bosingwa after he’s played that pass; he doesn’t give Samba a return passing option, instead he pretty much stands still. It doesn’t exactly scream ‘commitment to the cause’.
Anyway, well done to Damien Duff for chasing what would have been a lost cause.
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