Source: Daily_Mail
Fulham 2 Everton 1: Reminder of the Duff stuff as his stunner wins the day
Damien Duff revived memories of his glory days at Blackburn and Chelsea to produce a spectacular 79th-minute winner for his new club Fulham yesterday.
Just when it seemed Fulham would go a fourth Barclays Premier League game without scoring a conventional goal by foot or head - their winner at Portsmouth came off Bobby Zamora’s backside - they struck twice in response to Everton’s 33rd-minute goal from Tim Cahill.
First Paul Konchesky lashed home the equaliser off Sylvain Distin’s foot in the 57th
minute, before the 30-year-old Duff rifled in the winner.
But victory was marred by a 62nd-minute incident that left Everton captain Phil Neville writhing in agony after a crunching challenge from Dickson Etuhu.
Neville was carried off on a stretcher. Everton boss David Moyes, who had Etuhu as a player at Preston, said: ‘I know Dickson quite well and I don’t think he’s that type of player. But I do think he was a bit late getting there.
‘We’ve a rule that if you tackle and the trailing leg makes a connection, it’s a foul. That happened and it was missed - it was a bad miss by the referee. It was at least a foul, possibly even a booking, but it wasn’t given.’
Although Neville’s departure did Everton no favours, Moyes refused to make any excuses.
‘We were better in the first half, but Fulham upped the tempo and played better than us in the second half,’ he said.
‘We didn’t match them and they were much more forceful than we were.’
Fulham manager Roy Hodgson, whose team leapt to 10th place, was naturally delighted with Duff, for whom he splashed out £4million from Newcastle before
the deadline.
Hodgson, who first managed Duff in the player’s tender years at Blackburn, said: ‘It was a wonderful goal. I thought he played well throughout the game and was threatening that. His crossing was good and a lot of the danger came from his side of the field.’
On the Etuhu challenge, he said: ‘I thought it was an absolute 50-50 challenge between completely committed players and there was certainly no malicious intent. We feel sorry for Phil and hope he’s OK.’
Moyes added: ‘Phil has got a gash on his knee but will travel home with us and we think it will be OK.’
Everton took the lead when Leighton Baines swung a free-kick over from the left and the spring-heeled Cahill, who appeared to be fractionally offside, headed firmly home.
Fulham were fortunate to level. Danny Murphy’s free-kick bounced back off the Everton wall for Konchesky to halfvolley, but the ball deflected off Distin, taking it past a helpless Tim Howard.
The winner arrived after Andy Johnson’s clever pass and dummy run that left Duff with the space to cut inside and drive his shot inside the far-left post.
Fulham still had to withstand a fierce finish from Everton, with rookie goalkeeper David Stockdale, who replaced injured Mark Schwarzer, playing his part.
Marouane Fellaini jabbed the ball towards goal but Stockdale managed to keep it out, then Joseph Yobo hit the rebound but that was stopped on the line by Murphy.
Fulham captain Murphy said: ‘Getting a win under our belts at the Cottage gives us a bit of breathing space and we can look forward with confidence now.’
