Harbinger Of Glory

By the time the referee glanced at his watch, the pattern of the half had settled completely.

Fulham had seen plenty of the ball, but almost none of the spaces they wanted, while Wigan looked increasingly comfortable waiting for the one mistake that would allow them to spring forward.

Neither side, though, found the breakthrough before the interval as the whistle arrived with the scoreboard still untouched.

"Goalless at the break," the commentator said, "and I think goalless is the right word because both sides have had moments but neither has really tested the goalkeeper with anything that deserved a goal.

This has been a very cautious, very tactical first half and I suspect both managers have things to say during the interval."

"Cautious is polite," the co-commentator said. "Neither team is taking risks, and the crowd here can feel it, but if it keeps on like this, it can get very boring quickly for this crowd that had come expecting a spectacle."

The halftime break passed as quickly as it came, and Wigan emerged for the second half with one change.

Max Power stayed in the dressing room and in his place, Reyes took his stand on the pitch.

The substitution didn’t look particularly dramatic on paper, but Fulham understood what it meant soon enough.

Still, their expectations failed because rather than pushing into the spaces ahead of Leo, Reyes settled alongside him whenever Wigan built from deep, giving them another body in midfield and another passing option whenever Fulham tried to squeeze the centre of the pitch.

The adjustment freed Tiehi, and instead of sitting in front of the defence, he was suddenly everywhere else, stepping higher to press, chasing second balls and closing Fulham’s midfield before they could turn.

The freedom seemed to suit him immediately, and within minutes Wigan were playing ten yards further up the pitch than they had before the break.

Fulham noticed it just as quickly.

The comfortable spells of possession they’d enjoyed in the first half disappeared, replaced by blue shirts arriving earlier, pressing harder and asking questions they hadn’t been asked forty-five minutes before.

Nobody scored through the next twenty minutes despite the improved tempo, and at the seventieth minute both benches moved.

Bobby Reid and Cairney came on for Fulham, replacing Pereira and Reed, while Dawson sent Jake on for the veteran striker, Will Keane and Carlo for McClean simultaneously.

And right off the bat, those two forwards began causing problems, especially Carlo, who began playing like his life depended on it, and it was understandable after not having played a single match since their last game against West Ham almost 3 weeks ago.

Fulham found a channel six minutes later, their rotations finally catching Wigan’s shape slightly wrong.

Alex Iwobi, who had started from the bench, got onto the end of a ball and immediately slowed it, slowing down Joe Bennet too before bursting right into space.

Looking into the box, he found his man and yet as he looked up again after crossing the ball, he found his man all alone.

Raul Jimenez got in behind and touched the ball into the net, and for a moment, the Fulham supporters had their joy, but it was cut short immediately.

The assistant’s flag was up before the noise had fully formed, the margin clear, and the goal was gone before most people had finished celebrating it.

The groan around Craven Cottage hadn’t even finished rolling through the stands before Fulham threw themselves forward again, determined to keep Wigan pinned back.

"Fulham staying on the front foot here..." the commentator said. "They don’t want that chance to linger."

It was exactly what Wigan had been waiting for.

With more white shirts committing themselves ahead of the ball, the space behind Fulham’s back line finally opened.

And Leo, after seeing it, decided to replicate something he’d learned to improve under Spalletti’s guidance the past couple of weeks.

Without letting a pass from Joe Bennet settle, he sent the ball hurtling upfield.

The driven pass split through midfield and travelled forty yards without losing its pace, dropping perfectly into Jake’s path as the striker got in behind the Fulham defence for a split second.

"Calderon has spotted the run! And that pass is gorgeous."

Jake never tried to bring it under control.

Instead, he met it with a cushioned header, glancing it first time into the channel where Carlo was already thundering onto it.

"Beautifully worked... Carlo’s in behind now!"

Carlo burst past the recovering full-back and drove all the way to the byline.

He lifted his head only once, enough to take in the movement inside the box, before wrapping his foot around the ball and hanging a cross toward the far post.

For a second, the ball was going out until Ezra, who had spent most of the game in a defensive wide position and had been waiting for exactly this kind of moment, got a single touch to it and redirected it back into the box.

The Fulham defenders had already followed Carlo’s cross and so when Ezra’s effort got the ball back into the centre of the box, they were already caught trailing behind the ball, which was the killer blow.

Jake arrived and got his touch to the ball, and that was all.

The ball wrapped itself into the back of the net right as the Wigan end bellowed into the Craven Cottage atmosphere, having waited almost eighty-three minutes to see the ball in the back of the net.

"FINALLY WE HAVE A GOAL ON OUR HANDS! AND IT’S WIGAN WHO TAKE THE LEAD," the commentator said.

Marco Silva was found on the touchline, squinting like he couldn’t really understand what was going on.

Following that, he took a defender off for another attacker as Fulham pushed for the equaliser after the restart and through the final eight minutes and the seven added on top of that.

They couldn’t, as Wigan very nearly found another goal when Reyes received from Ezra and drove forward and hit one from outside the box that clipped the post and came back out rather than in.

Eventually the whistle came as the scoreboard above the cottage reflected Wigan’s one-nil win over Fulham.