Calvin Bassey has been named Man of the Match from Fulham’s victory over Arsenal.
The defender was an absolute rock at the heart of our defence, allowing the visiting attackers no time to settle, limiting them to just three shots on target all game, while he also boasted a season-best pass accuracy of 95.2 per cent.
One such example of halting the Gunners actually led to our equalising goal, as his crunching tackle on Bukayo Saka allowed João Palhinha and Willian to break and feed Tom Cairney, whose expert delivery was turned home by Raúl Jiménez.
It was a display that certainly pleased his Head Coach, with Marco Silva commenting post-match: “What a performance. What a performance. It's his birthday and it was a nice way to celebrate, but what a performance from him.
“He’s really growing and showing that we took the right decision when we signed a player like him, a player with great, great skills to be a top central defender in the future.
“Right now, he is a very good central defender. I really believe that if he keeps improving, understanding what we want from the game, he is going to be a very, very good level central defender for many years in this football club.
We can't show you this embedded content because you've only accepted 'essential' cookies. To view it, please accept all cookies
“He's strong, he’s quick, he has quality on the ball, always has the right mindset to learn, to listen, to improve every single day. I'm really pleased for him. Unfortunately, we are going to lose him for a long time now because he's going to the Africa Cup of Nations.”
With so many strong shifts all over the pitch, the voting for Man of the Match was quite spread, with 34.4% enough to secure Bassey top spot, ahead of Raúl (20.8%), Cairney (17.4%) and Antonee Robinson (12.9%).
