Fulham extend unwanted home run in "El Spot-kicko" to make it historic day for Brentford
By Alessandro Schiavone at Craven Cottage
Fulham 2-2 Ipswich Town
Goals: Jimenez 2x penalties (F),
Szmodics, Delap penalty (IT)
Three penalties, four goals, no winners.
Fulham and Ipswich couldn't be separated in a 2-2 draw with Raùl Jimenez rescuing his side thanks to a 91st-minute spot-kick to make it FOUR home draws in a row.
But if before kick-off nobody around Craven Cottage would have signed up for a point, with hindsight this is a golden one.
Because had Jack Clarke's 89th minute effort gone in instead of hitting the lower side of the post with the Tractor Boys 2-1 up, the game would have been well and truly up. That was the second time the visitors could have doubled their lead as German Bernd Leno wonderfully clawed away a Nathan Broadhead effort on the hour-mark.
But the stars spectacularly aligned for Marco Silva's men to snatch a late point after the Mexican centre-forward stuck his penalty in the top corner one minute into injury-time. That was his second of the encounter after already erasing Sammie Szmodics' first-half opener.
It took Liam Delap only two minutes to restore Kieran McKenna's boys' lead when he put the ball where no keeper in the world would have got to on 71 minutes.
Fulham's hopes of spoiling the day for bitter rivals Brentford, the only London side to win on match-day 20 were dashed when Rodrigo Muniz's last-gasp effort was routinely kept out by Christian Walton.
Depending on how you assess it, it's neither a point won nor two dropped.
For a club aiming to match their highest-ever 7th-place finish from 2007 this is too little.
But sitting in ninth position and only six points behind a Champions League spot after losing their best players in back-to-back summer transfer windows should by no means be sniffed at. And there's no guarantee the Cottagers would have been any higher with Mitrovic and Palhinha
FULHAM FC
1 Leno- 3 Bassey- 5 Andersen- 7 Jimenez- 8 Wilson- 10 Cairney- 17 Iwobi- 20 Lukic- 21 Castaneda- 31 Diop- 33 Robinson
IPSWICH TOWN
28 Walton- 3 Davis- 5 Morsy- 6 Woolfenden- 12 Cajuste- 18 Johnson- 19 Delap- 23 Szmodics- 24 Greaves- 26 O’Shea- 33 Broadhead
