Despite dominating the whole 90 minutes, it took an injury-time Petr Cech penalty save from Clint Dempsey for Chelsea to escape from Craven Cottage with a 0-0 draw tonight.
The draw leaves Chelsea in fifth place, two points behind Tottenham and out of the Champions League positions, while Fulham are now four points clear of the relegation zone in 12th place.
Chelsea started with Fernando Torres in his favored lone striker’s role with Didier Drogba on the bench, and the £50million man missed two great opportunities to open his Chelsea scoring account, but both times his control let him down.
First, Torres ran on to a header by Brazil midfielder Ramires but could only stretch to toe-poke a weak shot at goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer. A minute later, Torres pounced on a fabulous long pass from David Luiz, but allowed the ball to squirm away from him as he was about to shoot.
Torres miserable time at Chelsea continued as he was substituted for Drogba again, this time with 20 minutes left in the game. The switch from Ancelotti did nit work as why Chelsea had a lot of the ball they never really forced Fulham goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer to make a difficult save all night.
It looked like it was going to end 0-0 and then deep in injury-time Dempsey was tripped in the box by Luiz, but he couldn’t put away the penalty.
Chelsea have now picked up 20 points from their last 16 Premier League matches, and have to consider the unthinkable; that they might not qualify for the Champions League next season.