Fulham 1-3 Coventry City - Sky Blues stun league leaders at Craven Cottage

Neeskens Kebano hits the crossbar for FulhamImage source, Rex Features
Image caption,

Coventry beat Fulham at Craven Cottage to claim the double over the Londoners this season

Coventry City shocked Championship leaders Fulham 3-1 at Craven Cottage to delay the home side's seemingly inevitable promotion to the Premier League.

Michael Rose and Viktor Gyokeres scored four minutes apart a quarter of the way through the game to give the away team a commanding lead.

Substitute Bobby Decordova-Reid's neat, left-foot finish set up a grandstand end to the game after the hosts had squandered a number of chances, with Rodrigo Muniz's deflected effort almost finding its way in to equalise.

Callum O'Hare tapped into an empty net following a howler from Fulham captain Tim Ream in added time to secure the points that moved Coventry up to 10th in the table, six points off a play-off place, while Fulham still need two wins to guarantee automatic promotion.

Coventry took the lead from a corner as Rose leaped highest to divert the ball past Marek Rodak in the Fulham net.

The Slovakian was picking the ball out of his net again four minutes later, and this time he was at fault as he let Gyokeres's long-range shot go through him for 2-0.

Fulham carved out their best chance of the first half when Neeskens Kebano met Neco Williams' cross on the volley, crashing his shot against the crossbar.

Coventry almost had the game won just before the interval but Fulham somehow managed to keep the ball out from a corner, blocking three shots before finally getting the ball away.

Marco Silva sent on Decordova-Reid at half-time in place of Nathaniel Chalobah to inject more pace into the attack and it almost had an instant impact, with Decordova-Reid's ball in turned narrowly wide by Aleksandar Mitrovic.

Harry Wilson fizzed a free-kick just over from a threatening position before chances for Williams and Mitrovic as the hosts cranked up the pressure.

Decordova-Reid pulled one back with eight minutes to play before Mitrovic sent two headers over.

And deep into added time Fulham's hard work was undone when O'Hare turned the ball home following Ream's mistake to kill any hopes of a late point for the hosts.

Fulham boss Marco Silva said:

"This afternoon they were more confident and better than us.

"I have to give praise to them, I know at this level it's tough [to win games].

"It wasn't our afternoon in terms of being clinical because we had six or seven chances to score, we lost this game because of mistakes."

Coventry boss Mark Robins said:

"It's the first time we've won away from home against one of the top 10 teams.

"We created a number of chances on the counter-attack and the position of our defenders against a top scorer (Mitrovic) who's the record holder in the Championship now was very good. The way we played was superb really."

On play-off hopes: "Until it's mathematically impossible, of course we have [to believe we can do it].

"We just try to play the best we can in any given game."

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