After Manchester City returned to the top of the Premier League standings for the first time since February, Julian Alvarez said “every game is a final for us”.
Fulham, led by Marco Silva, pushed Man City all the way before they prevailed 2-1 at Craven Cottage.
The hosts exhibited tenacity throughout, quickly rebounding after Erling Haaland missed an early penalty.
In the 15th minute, Carlos Vinicius momentarily tied the score, but Alvarez’s incredible long-range goal restored City’s lead, and they held on to earn a crucial three points.
This is where we wanted to be at the start of the season “
Everyone’s put in really good work and now we’ve reached the top we need to defend it.
Every game is a final for us and everyone’s going to pull together to make that final effort.
It was really nice to score here.
A really important goal at an important point of the match. It’s really nice to contribute.
We knew it would never be easy coming here because of the pitch, because of how good Fulham are as a team. We were very happy to withstand the pressure and hold out.
Julian Alvarez said.
After a mainly good performance against a team still in search of a historic treble, Fulham boss Silva was forced to reflect on his team’s minor defensive slip-ups.
We had a clear plan for the game. We wanted to go through the centre of the pitch, with our wingers a little more inside.
If you try to block certain areas, they will look to expose others. The players, they stuck to their plan and did it well.
The moment after we equalised the game was probably our best moment in the match.
We cannot concede the goal in the way we did. A great strike from Alvarez, I know, but the way we build in certain areas we cannot lose the ball in that way and we gave them a chance in their counter-attack.
In the second half we were really competitive again. We didn’t create many chances, this is true, but we didn’t give many things to them either.”
Silva said.