Dogged Fulham beat leaders Norwich

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Fulham 1 Norwich City 0

Sean Kavanagh’s first goal for Fulham earned Kit Symons’ side a hard-earned victory over Championship leaders Norwich.

The 20-year-old, on only his fourth appearance, finished off a flowing counter-attack with an emphatic finish past John Ruddy midway through the first half.

Norwich dominated large spells of the match and squandered a gilt-edged chance to equalise seconds after the break when Lewis Grabban hit the bar from the penalty spot.

Josh Murphy also smacked the woodwork with a curling effort late on but Fulham held firm to stretch their unbeaten run against Norwich to 17 games.

More importantly, Fulham have now recorded back-to-back home league victories for the first time in 18 months.

The winning goal, on 21 minutes, came against the run of play as Norwich dominated territory and possession but without making Whites keeper Marcus Bettinelli work.

For all of City’s probing, they were unable to find a route past centre-backs Nikolay Bodurov and Dan Burn, and Fulham punished them on the break.

Scott Parker started the attack by feeding Hugo Rodallega, and Lasse Vigen Christensen laid the ball off for Kavanagh to drill home.

Fulham came close to doubling their lead on 38 minutes but Burn’s header from a corner was cleared off the line by Wes Hoolahan.

With some fans still taking their seats after half-time, Norwich were awarded a penalty when Burn was adjudged to have tugged back Cameron Jerome, but Grabban thundered his spot-kick against the bar.

Fulham were penned back for most of the second half and were relieved to see Bradley Johnson’s curling effort just beat the post and Murphy’s 80th-minute shot from the edge of the box cannon back off the crossbar.

Fulham (4-1-2-1-2): Bettinelli; Hoogland (Zverotic 22), Bodurov, Burn, Stafylidis; Parker; Christensen, Kavanagh; Ruiz (Dembele 72); Rodallega, McCormack.
Subs not used: Kiraly, Hutchinson, Roberts, Williams, Hyndman.

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