Sport

Fulham ease past Sheffield Wednesday as McCormack scores a stunner

Fulham 4-0 Sheffield Wednesday

Fulham manager Kit Symons praised his side’s dominant display as they comfortably beat Sheffield Wednesday at Craven Cottage in the Sky Bet Championship.

A sublime Ross McCormack free kick and a header from Shaun Hutchinson gave the hosts a two-goal lead at half time.

Lasse Vigen Christensen made it 3-0 after a flowing counter attack before Cauley Woodrow completed the scoring with a late penalty.

The result sees Fulham move ahead of Wednesday on goal difference to 13th in the league, leaving Symons content with the controlled display of all his players.

He said: “I was happy with the overall performance and another clean sheet.

“I think it’s been well documented that our defending throughout the course of the season hasn’t always been maybe as good as it should have been.

“But that’s now two clean sheets on the spin which pleases me greatly and gives us a great platform to go on and win games.

“With the quality of this group of players we’ve got, we’re always going to score goals.”

Despite the comfortable scoreline, Sheffield Wednesday started brightly and should have led when Tom Lees fired over from close range.

However, it was McCormack who broke the deadlock curling a brilliant free kick into the top left hand corner in the 35th minute.

The Cottagers doubled their lead nine minutes later as Hutchinson headed home Bryan Ruiz’s floated free kick for his first Fulham goal.

McCormack almost replicated his free-kick heroics of the first half after the break but saw his curling effort go narrowly wide.

The Scot was a threat throughout the game and Symons was delighted with the performance of the 28-year-old.

“I thought Ross was very good again. I thought he had a very strong performance for us,” said Symons.

“He’s maybe not scored as many goals as he would have liked, but his input to the team has been excellent.”

With Wednesday applying pressure, Hugo Rodallega led a sweeping Fulham counter attack and released Christensen who fired low past Keiren Westwood to increase the Londoners lead.

Fulham’s third effectively ended the game as a contest and saw them secure their eighth win in 16 league matches since Symons’ took over in September.

Claude Dieina’s foul on Patrick Roberts allowed Woodrow to score from the spot in injury time and complete a comprehensive victory.

Fulham now head into a congested Christmas period where they face Bournemouth and Brighton in the space of three days starting away at Bournemouth on Boxing Day.

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