Chelsea 1-2 Fulham - What it means

The win and the three points go to Fulham who move up to 8th in the Premier League. What’s the fuss?

Let’s lay it out.

Winning at home is nice. Winning away is better. The prospect of being part of the sardine pack in one corner of your opponent’s home and ruminating over the possibility that you might celebrate what, say, the 40,000 hosts haven’t come to see? Tantalising.

The joy that being an away fan provides is a cocktail of a communal and personal experience. That you get to be one of the few present. Live. There.

Overpriced hotdogs wafting through the concourse. Trying but failing to frictionlessly move past and through these nameless semi-family members of yours that you might encounter once a fortnight. Some of them you’ve never seen before. Others you have and you still don’t know their name but alright! You doing well? Nice Christmas? Be nice if we won today wouldn’t it?

A couple more of those conversations might ensue once you take those dozen or so steps up from the concourse, where for a split second every time, you remember how it felt the first time you toddled up them.

Because you were a little bit smaller and the journey lasted a bit longer. You wondered what you were about to see before your eyes widened as the bright lights, the thousands of seats and the grass sprang up along with the endless possibilities of what you might be about to witness.

Except if, like me, you’re a Fulham fan and you have made the short journey to Stamford Bridge over the years, the possibilities when playing Chelsea weren’t endless. They were finite and cruel. Just down the road at home, it was a similar story to be honest.

Making Darth Vader blue edition (John Terry) cry in an Aston Villa shirt at Wembley a couple of years ago got the schadenfreude going.

Beating Chelsea in our own backyard in 2023? Much better even but still, not quite the holy grail of winning at our arch-rivals at Mordor.

Twenty-one visits since 1979. No win. Not one. Come on.

And you’ve been there for 14 of them. Some in the home end with your godfather, sitting on your hands and letting out little yelps on the precious few occasions that we did score.

Most of them in the away end, clutching hands to head over near-misses, crushing defeats, some oh so glorious 0-0s and occasional 1-1s.

You also defiantly appealed to your 40,000 hosts, maybe even occasionally but not always in the direction of where your godfather sits, that blue flags should be positioned uncomfortably within their anatomy.

What’s worse? They don’t even really care about you, precisely because you never beat them. And you think they’re arrogant.

Your godfather is part of the reason you’re still alive. He helped steer you towards making healthy decisions for your life when you fell into a depression in a big, big way.

That is no fair counterweight to what I say now in football terms. But, on just one occasion, he represented the exact arrogance that made all those defeats and near-misses so galling.

Because you remember that time when he came to Fulham, wearing a Chelsea baseball cap, for a game Chelsea weren’t playing in. He knew he could get away with it. Would you think of doing the same thing at Chelsea? No, but that’s ultimately the point of this rivalry. It’s a power play. They ruffle our hair. We scowl but they don’t care. They hold our forehead with one hand while we, the older but weaker siblings, wildly swing our arms towards them, out of reach.

Over the years, you see other teams go to Chelsea and win. You see Brentford and QPR, your two other closest rivals, manage it. Bradford City, not a rival, but of the third tier, achieve it in the FA Cup. Every time you see it happen, you say to yourself, oh I’m happy for them but the true bridesmaid inside you wonders - when’s my day going to come?

26th December 2024. It happened. You were 4,500 miles away when it happened but you saw it.

With one of your best mates too. You first met Saoirse when you were eight and have been watching Fulham with her ever since. When you both lived in England, sometimes in person. Now, she’s out in Canada with her partner, Jack, and you’re in Germany but come matchday, messages ping back and forth over the Atlantic via WhatsApp.

You’re deeply superstitious. Football made you this way. Saoirse may be wearing her Fulham shirt when she rolls onto the sofa at 7am on this historic morning. You’re not because you believe without any empirical evidence but just your hunch that you don’t really win big games when you wear your shirt when watching games on the TV.

The story of the game tallies with all those other games against Chelsea you’ve seen. Playing alright but one nil down at half time. So you go into the kitchen. The homemade mince pies stare back from the counter.

There’s one with FFC carefully, yet still wonkily embroidered on top of it, next to another less imaginatively topped one. Sure, it’s 8am but you eat them both.

You tell Saoirse that this was to provoke enough goals for a win. She looks at you. YOU ATE TWO.

But there’s no time to ponder this. The second half is starting. Fulham are shooting towards the away end now. Look at them. Look at us. This doesn’t feel like it’s going to be the day.

Although steadily throughout the second half, we are coming forward quite a lot. And ok, our goalkeeper has made a few saves but we’ve had some half-chances. Ten minutes to play. Another venture forward. Down the left. Into the box. Header back across. Holy shit. We’ve scored but argh. No no. Wait. Wait. Wait. Can’t celebrate yet. Got to wait for the replay. I’m not celebrating this if it’s going to be disallo…he’s onside. Harry Wilson is onside when he knocks it in. Ok. Wow. Deep breaths.

We go on. The clock ticks down. They nearly win it but they don’t. Hang on. That means - don’t think it, don’t think it, don’t think it - we could win it.

You say to Saoirse we should be greedy. Go for it. Win it. Imagine. She shoots a look back at you, thinking this may just be you trying to justify your mince pie consumption.

And then we don’t have to imagine. We get to feel it. We attack again. Hang on. Down the right to Sasa Lukic. A low cross into the box to a 22-year-old Brazilian, Rodrigo Muniz Carvalho. He controls the ball. Beat. He strikes the ball. Beat. Holy shit. That’s going in, isn’t it?

Hang on, I hadn’t planned for this. I’ve dreamt about this many, many times. But your dream is actually taking on a form now. To be blunt, what the fuck am I actually going to do?

Well, the ball rolls into the far corner first and you shriek. You embrace Saoirse. You yelp. You wonder what Jack is thinking next door, minding his own business before you turn away. You howl with happiness again. And again. Do people howl with happiness? You apparently do. And look at that away end!

Look at them. Bobbing up and down! 3,000 of them. 3,000 of us. Limbs. We’re going to win. We’re actually going to win. There. In their backyard.

The game restarts. Wait, what. They’re coming forward. No no no. No. Not this time. Your goalkeeper, a handsome German called Bernd, pulls off a fine save. The ball is lobbed into the box a few more times. It’s cleared, not once but three times by a fine Frenchman called Issa.

And then, our players are raising their hands to the sky. It’s done. That’s what the dream looks like. It looks like this. It’s right now.

You hug Saoirse for a lot longer. You release from the hug and put your hands to your head. You might be about to cry. This is a lot. Deep breaths. Elation. You see the away end. You see the players in front of it. Your body’s trying to process a lot right now but your heart sings.

Death Star? Blew it up, mate. Mordor? Smashed it, brother.

Dream come true. One question. Now what?