Liverpool 0-0 Fulham: a first league point and clean sheet

Liverpool 0-0 Fulham was the first goalless league match of Liverpool’s season and Fulham’s first league point. The visitors arrived at Anfield on Saturday with no points from three matches and seven goals conceded. They left with a point and their first league clean sheet, and Liverpool are left with an unbeaten record that now contains three draws.

There was very little between the sides. Liverpool had 56.1% of the ball and fourteen shots, three of them on target. Fulham had ten shots, and eight corners to Liverpool’s five. Bernd Leno and Alisson Becker made three saves each, and neither was beaten.

Leno keeps out Muñoz, Isak and Szoboszlai

Liverpool’s best moments came in waves. On twenty-two minutes Dominik Szoboszlai crossed and Víctor Muñoz headed from the left side of the six-yard box, and Leno saved it in the top left corner. Seven minutes into the second half Florian Wirtz set up Alexander Isak in the centre of the box, and Leno saved again, this time in the middle of the goal.

The third save came on sixty-seven minutes, from a Szoboszlai shot from outside the box that Leno saved at the top of his goal. Liverpool changed personnel as the half went on, with Cody Gakpo and Alexis Mac Allister on for Muñoz and Ryan Gravenberch on the hour, and Rio Ngumoha and Jeremie Frimpong following on seventy-two minutes. None of it produced a fourth shot on target.

Isak had scored three times in Liverpool’s first three league matches, including both goals at Portman Road on Friday 4 September. Liverpool had scored twice in each of their first three league matches. This was the first league match in which they failed to score at all.

Fulham had the better chances on target

Fulham will reflect that they might have won it. Josh King tested Alisson twice, first with a right-footed shot from the left side of the box on thirty-three minutes and then with an effort from outside the box on seventy-six that Alisson saved in the top left corner. In between, Calvin Bassey met an Alex Iwobi cross with a header that the Liverpool goalkeeper saved at the top of his goal.

It was a disciplined performance from a side that had been punished heavily for its defending in the first three weeks. Fulham committed eight fouls, received one yellow card, for the substitute Kenny Tete on eighty-one minutes, and Liverpool did not have another shot on target after the sixty-seventh minute.

• Saves: Bernd Leno (Fulham) 3, Alisson Becker (Liverpool) 3
• Shots: Liverpool 14 (3 on target), Fulham 10
• Corners: Liverpool 5, Fulham 8
• Possession: Liverpool 56.1%, Fulham 43.9%
• Yellow card: Kenny Tete (Fulham), 81 minutes

Fulham finally have something

The context makes the point worth more than one. Fulham lost 3-2 at home to Chelsea on the opening weekend, 1-0 at Sunderland and 3-2 at home to Crystal Palace, a match in which they took twenty-five shots and still lost. They had conceded seven goals in three league matches, and the problem in every one of them had been what happened without the ball.

Here, against a side that had scored six goals in its first three league matches, they did not concede at all. Fulham are eighteenth with one point, and the table is still unkind. But a clean sheet at Anfield, their first in the league this season, is a sign that the defending which cost them the first three weeks can be fixed.

Liverpool: unbeaten, and uneven

Liverpool are eighth with six points from four matches: a 2-2 draw at Newcastle, a 2-2 draw at home to Nottingham Forest, the 2-0 win at Ipswich, and this. They have not lost, and they have now kept consecutive league clean sheets, but three draws in four is not the pace of the two sides at the top, who have twelve points each.

Their next match is a cup tie. Liverpool host Tottenham in the Carabao Cup third round on Tuesday, and then return to a league season in which the defensive improvement of the last week will need to arrive alongside the goals of the first three.

Simulate the rest of the Premier League season

Fulham’s first league point and Liverpool’s third league draw both change the shape of the table. On the Premier League simulator you can play the rest of the season from the real standings, or run this fixture again through the AI simulator and see how often Liverpool find the goal Leno denied them.

• Play the remaining 34 rounds from the real table and the real fixture list
• Simulate this week’s Carabao Cup third-round ties, including Liverpool against Tottenham Hotspur
• Run any fixture through the AI match simulator, in tactical view or in the physics arena
• Open the line-up builder for both clubs before you kick off a simulation
• Turn an arena simulation into a vertical video ready to share

"Fulham had conceded seven goals in three matches. At Anfield they conceded none."