Fulham pounce on Robinho-less Manchester City
Mark Hughes defended his decision to rest a weary Robinho as the fatigue factor and Fulham conspired to increase the pressure on the Manchester City manager.
Two second-half goals from Clint Dempsey, either side of Dickson Etuhu’s long-range strike, overturned Stephen Ireland’s first-half goal and consigned City to a fifth defeat in six games.
Robinho’s relegation to the substitutes’ bench and City’s dismal performance prompted chants of displeasure from sections of the home supporters, but with the club’s season now seemingly resting the outcome of Thursday’s Uefa Cup second-leg at home to Hamburg, who City trail 3-1, Hughes insisted that he had no option but to gamble on his team selection against Roy Hodgson’s team
Hughes said: “That was the first opportunity that I have had to give Robbie a break. I am here to try to protect the players we have and I know the levels of the players at this point in time. Shouting for individual players to come on is maybe a bit simplistic.
“I am just trying to protect those who have had the majority of the workload and Robbie certainly falls into that category and today was one of the few occasions I felt he would benefit from a break.
“We just didn’t have enough energy levels throughout the team, though, and the effects of the Hamburg g ame last Thursday were significant.”
With seven consecutive victories behind them at Eastlands, there was little to suggest that City would surrender that record in such sorry fashion against Fulham, but so much for the form book. City’s leggy performance was perhaps unsurprising, but they weren’t just bad, they were awful.
Ireland’s opening goal, a right-foot curler from 20 yards after he had carried the ball from his own half, was a gem of a strike, but it was hardly in keeping with his team’s performance.
From the moment that Bobby Zamora dummied Richard Dunne and Nedum Onuoha to tee up Andy Johnson inside the opening sixty seconds, it was evident that City were set for one of those days. Dunne was embarrassed on countless occasions by Johnson in the first-half, but his fellow defenders fared little better. How City lack a commanding centre-half.
Ireland’s goal was a false dawn, however, and Fulham regrouped quickly to regain control of the game and it was long overdue when Dempsey levelled the scores with a long-range effort on 50 minutes after Pablo Zabaleta had been dispossessed by Zamora. Not for the first – or last – time, City had cut their own throats.
Hughes replaced the exhausted Bojinov with youngster Ched Evans, leaving Robinho to kick his heels on the bench. "We want Robinho" chanted the City supporters and, when Etuhu put Fulham ahead on 59 minutes following another defensive lapse by Nigel de Jong, the chant became "You don’t know what you’re doing!" The Robinho gamble was now backfiring spectacularly, so Hughes had no option but to call on the £32.5m British record signing. Robinho is not the player he was last August, though, and his lack of goals since the turn of the year is no coincidence. The fans were pinning their hopes on yesterday’s man and Hughes was now doing the same.
But apart from a tame shot that Fulham goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer grasped at the second attempt on sixty-seven minutes, Robinho offered little to suggest that he should have started the game.
It was Fulham, a team of individuals performing beyond their collective talents, that set the example for Hughes’s players and Dempsey’s second goal, a toe poke from twelve yards seven minutes from time, deservedly extended their winning margin and sustain ambitions of European qualification.
Hodgson said: “There are about four or five teams who, depending on what happens, could find themselves in that seventh spot. But I don’t know if any of the candidates are actively eyeing it because most, like us, are just quite happy to be comfortable in mid-table.” telegraph.co.uk
