Manchester Utd 4 Fulham 1

Man­chester Uni­ted 4 Ful­ham 1, Old Traf­ford, Eng­lish Pre­mier Lea­gue, Dec­ember 8, 2018. Jose Mou­rinho re­cor­ded his 50th Pre­mier Lea­gue vic­tory as man­ager of Man­chester Uni­ted as his Old Traf­ford si­de over­came Pre­miership new­comers Ful­ham by 4-1 cour­tesy of a goal each from Ash­ley Young, Ju­an Ma­ta, Ro­melu Lu­kaku, and Mar­cus Rashford.

Sev­enth pla­ced Man­chester Uni­ted put in a con­vin­cing per­form­ance as they out­classed and out­hustled bot­tom of the Pre­mier Lea­gue Ful­ham by a 4-1 score at their Old Traf­ford base thanks to fir­st ha­lf goals from Ash­ley Young, Ju­an Ma­ta, and Ro­melu Lu­kaku be­fore Mar­cus Rash­ford sealed the mar­gin of vic­tory late in the sec­ond frame. The West Lon­doners, who were re­duced to ten men mid­way thro­ugh the sec­ond pe­riod when An­dre-Frank Zambo An­guissa re­ceived his sec­ond yel­low card of the day, nev­er stood a chan­ce ag­ainst a de­term­ined and en­er­get­ic Uni­ted te­am des­per­ate for three points at ho­me. In their pre­vi­ous five Pre­miership fix­tures, Man­chester Uni­ted had de­feated AFC Bourne­mouth, drawn ag­ainst Crys­tal Pal­ace, South­ampton, and Ar­senal, and be­en beaten by Man­chester City, whi­le Ful­ham had over­come South­ampton, drawn ag­ainst Lei­cester City, and lost ag­ainst Hud­dersfield To­wn, Liver­pool, and Chel­sea. The Old Traf­ford­i­ans star­ted the fir­st pe­riod of the tie on the front foot and the ho­me out­fit were one goal up when Young ham­mered the ball pa­st Ful­ham and Spain in­ter­na­tion­al shot stop­per Ser­gio Rico and in­to the far cor­ner of the net af­ter just thir­teen min­utes of the play. Man­chester Uni­ted con­tin­ued to dom­in­ate pro­ceed­ings and at­tack­ing mid­fielder Ma­ta, who was be­gin­ning to look more like the in­flu­ence of old, made it 2-0 to the red shirts wi­th a well pla­ced ef­fort in­to the bot­tom right cor­ner some fif­teen min­utes la­ter in the ga­me, whi­le Lu­kaku hit a third goal for the hosts when the mas­sive marks­man fou­nd the back of the net from clo­se ran­ge in the 42nd minute.

In the sec­ond pe­riod, Man­chester Uni­ted con­tin­ued to con­trol pos­ses­sion and ter­rit­ory. As the con­test pro­gressed, tho­ugh, Aboubakar Kamara re­duced the de­fi­cit for Clau­dio Ranieri´s Ful­ham from the spot in the 67th min­ute of the clash af­ter Uni­ted mid­fielder An­der Her­rera had bro­ught down the French for­ward in­side the pen­alty area, but on­ly two min­utes la­ter the plucky vis­it­ors had play­maker An­dre-Frank Zambo An­guissa sent off for a sec­ond book­able of­fence. And wi­th less than ten min­utes re­maining of the en­counter, Mar­cus Rash­ford sco­red Man­chester United´s fourth goal of the af­ter­noon when the twenty-one-year-old Eng­land stri­ker un­leashed an un­stoppable shot from out­side the eight­een-yard box. Af­ter soundly de­feat­ing Ful­ham 4-1 at Old Traf­ford, Uni­ted had now won twenty-two of their twenty-four ho­me mat­ches ag­ainst The Cot­tagers in all com­pet­i­tions since the 14th of Jan­uary 1905. But un­for­tu­nately, the win proved to be some­thing of a false dawn as The Man­chester Reds suf­fered a hu­mi­li­at­ing 3-1 Pre­mier Lea­gue loss to old en­emies Liver­pool at An­field the fol­low­ing week­end, and Jose Mou­rinho was re­placed by care­taker man­ager Ole Gun­nar Sol­skjaer a mere two days la­ter af­ter spend­ing on­ly two-and-a-ha­lf years in the hot seat at The Theatre of Dreams. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Da­vid de Gea, Dio­go Dalot, Chris Small­ing, Phil Jones, Ash­ley Young, An­der Her­rera, Ju­an Ma­ta, Jesse Lin­gard, Ne­manja Mat­ic, Ro­melu Lu­kaku, Mar­cus Rash­ford. Sub­stitutes: Ser­gio Rom­ero, Mar­cos Rojo, An­dreas Pe­reira, Mar­ou­ane Fel­laini, Fred, Paul Po­gba, Scott Mc­Tom­inay. Ful­ham Te­am: Ser­gio Rico, Alfie Mawson, De­nis Odoi, Tim Ream, Joe Bry­an, Ry­an Ses­segnon, Tom Cair­ney, Jean Mi­chael Seri, An­dre-Frank Zambo An­guissa, Alek­sandar Mitro­vic, An­dre Schurrle. Sub­stitutes: Mar­cus Bet­tinelli, Aboubakar Kamara, Cyr­us Christie, Ibrahi­ma Cisse, Stefan Jo­hansen, Neeskens Ke­bano, Lu­ciano Vietto.

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