Third defeat in a row for troubled Fulham
Fulham 0 Wolves 1
Bakary Sako’s goal made it three defeats from their opening three Championship matches for troubled Fulham, whose fans turned on manager Felix Magath after the final whistle.
Sako had an injury-time penalty saved by keeper Jesse Joronen but his 15th-minute strike was enough to give Wolves a deserved win.
Magath again made some surprising choices, with 20-year-old left-back Sean Kavanagh making his debut along with summer signing Mark Fotheringham.
The Whites looked disorganised and went behind after switching off at a Wolves corner.
Scott Golbourne steered the ball in low and after Dave Edwards’ clever dummy, Sako fired into the bottom corner.
Sako caused the home side all sorts of problems and almost created a second goal when his fantastic ball into the box was headed narrowly wide by Danny Batth.
With the hosts showing no sign of improvement, Magath waited only five minutes of the second half to make a change.
The German replaced Fotheringham with Moussa Demebele, who immediately made his presence felt by bursting past two defenders and testing Carl Ikeme with a shot the Wolves keeper was equal to.
Matt Doherty then missed a golden chance for Wolves by heading Kevin McDonald’s cross wide at the far post.
Fulham responded to that lucky escape with a decent spell in which forwards Ross McCormack and Cauley Woodrow fired over.
But McCormack was otherwise unable to produce anything of note and Fulham were toothless despite the best efforts of youngsters Woodrow and Patrick Roberts.
Highly-rated teenager Roberts showed moments of pure class and was his team’s main attacking threat, while Woodrow worked hard and showed good movement.
However, with no points and only one goal so far this season, and with big-money signing McCormack failing to impress, these are worrying times for Fulham supporters, many of whom had left the ground by the time Cameron Burgess clumsily brought down Nouha Dicko in the box.
Joronen kept out the resulting spot-kick by Sako but by then there were only seconds remaining.
Magath then felt the wrath of some of the frustrated home fans, whose team are one off the bottom of the table, albeit at a very early stage of the campaign, following back-to-back home losses.
Fulham (4-4-2): Joronen; Hoogland, Bodurov, Burgess, Kavanagh (R Williams 85); Roberts, Parker, Fotheringham (Dembele 50), Stafylidis; McCormack, Woodrow (Rodallega 80).
Subs not used: Bettinelli, Hutchinson, Eisfeld, Voser.
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