Sunderland Breaks 17-Year Winless Streak Against Fulham
Álvaro Arbeloa stared into the middle distance, frozen in thought. On the opposite touchline, Régis Le Bris simply exhaled. Relief, not joy, washed over him.
This was a game played with the handbrake on, shaped less by ambition than by the fear of losing. In the end, it was decided by two men who did not start it. Habib Diarra and Wilson Isidor stepped off the Sunderland bench in the second half, combined in the decisive moment, and tipped a tight, nervy contest Sunderland’s way.
Isidor’s winner did more than deliver Sunderland’s first victory of the season and leave Arbeloa’s Fulham still pointless. It snapped a 17-year wait for a Premier League win against Fulham, a psychological weight finally shifted off Wearside shoulders.
Sadiki runs the midfield, chances run dry
For 45 minutes, the match lived on the edge of intrigue without ever quite tipping into it. Sunderland saw plenty of the ball but rarely cut Fulham open. Their dominance of possession felt sterile, and Bernd Leno could almost have brought a book.
The main reason the game stayed goalless lay further back. Noah Sadiki ran central midfield with authority, stamping out Fulham’s best ideas before they could properly form. Time and again, the Democratic Republic of the Congo international stepped in, intercepted, or simply muscled opponents off the ball. Every time Fulham tried to build a counter, Sadiki was there, snuffing it out.
Fulham created only one real chance before the break. Alex Iwobi slid a clever pass into Josh King, who found himself squeezed by the angle and his own misjudgment. King’s miscued effort turned geometry into an enemy, the ball skewing away rather than across Robin Roefs, who otherwise spent the half largely untroubled.
So the stalemate held. Sunderland probed, but their attacking edge was blunt, their final ball lacking conviction. For all the neat patterns, there was no real serration to their play.
Up in the stands, owner Kyril-Louis Dreyfus watched on. If Le Bris needed evidence to support his push for a specialist right-winger and another striker before the transfer window shuts, the first half provided it in high definition.
Mukiele’s tackle, Le Bris’s gamble
At least Le Bris had one key reinforcement back in the spine of his team. Nordi Mukiele, restored to central defence after injury, reminded Wearside exactly why he matters so much.
Early in the second half, Sander Berge split Sunderland’s back line with a superb through pass, sending Gonzalo García racing clear. García, who had scored in each of his first two competitive games since arriving from Real Madrid, seemed certain to continue that run. He had the angle, the momentum, the goal at his mercy.
Then Mukiele arrived. A perfectly timed, full-blooded sliding challenge took ball, not man, and with it Fulham’s best opening. It was a defender’s tackle that felt like a goal.
García, so sharp since his move, found Sunderland’s defence a puzzle he could not quite solve. Yet slowly, almost imperceptibly, Fulham began to look more assertive. Arbeloa’s side edged higher, their passing a little crisper, their press more coordinated.
Le Bris sensed it. Rather than wait for the game to tilt away from him, he moved first. Off came the ineffective Nilson Angulo and Brian Brobbey. On came Diarra and Isidor.
The effect was almost immediate.
Isidor’s miss, then redemption
Enzo Le Fée, quiet but always capable of a sudden touch of class, produced one. He swept a gorgeous first-time ball across the face of goal, the kind of delivery that begs to be finished.
Isidor arrived at pace. It looked harder to miss than to score. Somehow he managed it, smacking his effort against the base of the post. Le Bris dropped to his knees, the picture of disbelief. Isidor looked stunned, mortified, as if the chance might haunt him.
It didn’t have time to.
Sunderland’s substitutes had already stretched Fulham, dragging their high defensive line into dangerous territory. The pressure finally told. Moments after that glaring miss, Diarra found space wide and whipped another superb ball across the box.
This time Isidor did not hesitate. He attacked it with conviction, meeting the pass with a fierce, rising strike that screamed past Leno. High velocity, ruthless precision, and the weight of 17 winless years against Fulham gone in an instant.
Stadium tension flipped to noise. The goal breathed life into Sunderland’s play and belief into their season.
Diarra’s impact was brief but telling. His energy and directness had disrupted Fulham’s shape, and his assist proved decisive. An injury soon forced him off, replaced by Chris Rigg, but the damage to Fulham was already done.
By then, both substitutes had done enough. Le Bris’s gamble from the bench had won the night. Arbeloa, still searching for his first points of the campaign, left with questions that run deeper than a single missed tackle or misjudged finish.
