Fulham 1, Sunderland 3

Apr 7 2008 by Luke Edwards, The Journal

IT is difficult to say which is more unusual for the first weekend in April – the snow which fell over London on Sunday morning or the fact Sunderland have all but secured their Premier League safety with weeks to spare.

The table will show the Wearsiders need at least one more win to be absolutely certain of avoiding a third successive instant return to the Championship after promotion, but it will take a miracle for Bolton Wanderers to catch them now.

Even Roy Keane, despite stubbornly warning on Saturday evening that safety was not yet assured, could not successfully hide his happiness at a result which means he can quietly start to plan properly for the next stage of his project.

Having established Sunderland in the Premier League, Keane will now concentrate on trying to establish them as one of English football’s forces.

It will not be an easy task, but Keane has never done easy. While the chat among fans and pundits over the weekend centred on how much money will be spent on new players in the summer, and who might arrive to bolster a squad which has gradually improved all season, Keane knows he has to persuade them to come.

His name and reputation, as well as Sunderland’s blossoming one, will help but there are a clutch of clubs – Aston Villa, Blackburn, Everton, Manchester City and, of course, Newcastle – who will be competing for the same sort of players in the summer. It is going to be a ferocious market place and it remains to be seen how a club like Sunderland – still thought of as unfashionable by many – fare in that sort of environment.

That, though, can wait for now. The present Sunderland players deserve to be the centre of attention for the time being and the stars of the show at Craven Cottage can be confident they will still be an integral part of their manager’s plans whoever he brings in.

Kenwyne Jones, Dean Whitehead, Jonny Evans, Andy Reid and Phil Bardsley were all important in Saturday’s third successive win – the first time Sunderland have achieved that in the top flight since December 2000 – while others, most notably Michael Chopra, also staked their claim from the substitutes’ bench.

Goalkeeper Craig Gordon had a quiet game, but he has been anything but since Christmas, and Danny Collins continues to be a revelation at left-back. It was Collins who opened the scoring against the Cottagers, taking advantage of some slack marking at a set-piece to nod the ball home from close range.

The former Chester City defender has been threatening to score for several weeks and was unfortunate to have an earlier effort ruled out for a dubious foul on Paul Konchesky, but the timing of his strike, just before half-time, was perfect.

Fulham had shaded the exchanges until that point as they looked for the win they needed to bolster their own survival hopes, but the goal knocked much of the fight out of them. The rest of it was kicked from them when Chopra – on for a struggling and unfit Carlos Edwards at the break – made it two.

Gordon had made a decent save with his legs to deny Diomansy Kamara straight after the restart, but when his long kick forward was superbly flicked on by Jones, Chopra produced a delicious first-time finish to lob Fulham goalkeeper Kasey Keller.

Keller did well to keep out a Grant Leadbitter effort shortly afterwards and it might have been an uncomfortable finale for the visitors had Fulham managed to build on David Healy’s superb strike.

They did not and Sunderland, confidence surging through them after back-to-back wins, killed them off with Jones’ seventh goal for the club. The Trinidad and Tobago international has been one of the finds of the season, without ever scoring the number of goals he should. But he made no mistake after Whitehead had done fantastically well to charge into the area, stay on his feet and then pick the striker out at the far post.

It was the goal which probably sends Fulham down, but it was the one which confirmed Keane as one of the Premier League’s brightest young managers. He might even briefly accept a few pats on the backs for that.