FOOTBALL, as we well know, is full of surprises, but few surely as surprising as this. Fulham, one place from bottom of the Premier League having failed to win an away game in the competition for 19 months and 33 games, not only beat Reading but played them off the park.

It had been 581 days since they last won on the road in the league, their 2-1 victory over Newcastle at St James’ Park on September 9, 2006 a distant memory. However, the 2-0 margin scarcely flattered them. As their own manager, Roy Hodgson, remarked: “With any luck any one of those three crossbar shots would have gone into the goal.”

In the event, Fulham’s luck was emphatically up and none of them did. Twice they were frustrated by gallant saves by Marcus Hahnemann when his fingertips and the bar kept the ball out. Later, not even the American goalkeeper could get near the typically adroit right-footed free kick from the tireless Jimmy Bullard, but that came back off the bar as well.

However, just as you wondered whether Reading could achieve a wholly unmerited draw in the four minutes of stoppage time, what did Fulham do but score again, the substitute Erik Nevland doubling the lead provided earlier by Brian McBride.

Hodgson’s delight, after the gloom which followed defeat by Sunderland a week earlier at Craven Cottage, was tempered by the knowledge that where results of struggling teams had gone in Fulham’s favour a week earlier, yesterday they did not.

“If we continue to play like that,” he said, “I think it would give us cause to believe that our task is not impossible, just extremely difficult.”

Steve Coppell, characteristically, made no excuse for his team’s impoverished display in defeat. “We were poor today,” Coppell admitted. “There’s no excuses, they were better today, they deserved to win. We’re not going to try to put up any defence. Just take it on the chin today, come back”. And as he admitted, coming back at Arsenal next week will hardly be easy. If Reading play anything like they did yesterday it will be quite impossible.

Coppell put part of the blame on the fact that Reading themselves are not yet out of the relegation wood. “There was a nervous rush about our play,” he said. “That wasn’t productive. You think, ‘If I make a mistake it’s going to be very, very costly’.” This was a Fulham, however, unrecognisable from recent games: quick, intelligent, creative and incisive. We saw something of what we might call the old McBride, whose absence from so much of this season has had a great deal to do with Fulham being where they are. Yesterday, however, he was as sharp as he had been at his best. He drove in the first goal after 24 minutes. The ball had been sent from the big centre-back Brede Hangeland to David Healy, out to the ever effective Simon Davies, who had switched to the right, and in again to McBride, who swept it inexorably past Hahnemann.

In the last minutes of the first-half, however, Reading seemed to be getting their game together and you wondered whether Fulham would hang on. With four minutes to the break, a cross by John Oster found Fulham’s defence, for once, distracted and Kevin Doyle sent his header narrowly wide. However, if this seemed a sign of a Reading revival, it was a thoroughly misleading one.

On 52 minutes, McBride struck a fierce left-footed volley which Hahnemann, at full, desperate stretch, just managed to touch over the bar. McBride was back to the sharp performer we knew before that sad August injury. He had a shot blocked in the first half by Andre Bikey, and one in the second-half by Ivar Ingimarsson.

With 20 minutes remaining, when Bullard took a corner from the right, Hangeland headed powerfully but Hahnemann’s fingertips and the bar saved Reading again. Two minutes later, Bullard’s free kick rebounded from that same crossbar.

Reading however, were not destined to escape. The game was in stoppage time when Davies crossed from the right and Nevland drove his shot past Hahnemann and the final nail into a pallid Reading’s coffin: “If we continue to play like that,” said Hodgson, “it would give me cause to believe that our task is not impossible. Just extremely difficult. We’ve made it hard for ourselves, but at least we are still in the race. We did it today and I thought we did it the right way. We did it by playing football from the first to the last.”

Star man: Brian McBride (Fulham)

Reading: Hahnemann, Rosenior, Bikey, Ingimarsson, Shorey, Oster (Little 61min), Harper, Matejovsky (Cisse 87min), Hunt, Doyle, Long (Kitson 61min)

Fulham: Keller, Stalteri, Hughes, Hangeland, Konchesky, Davies, Murphy (Andreasen 90min), Bullard, Dempsey (Bocanegra 85min), McBride, Healy (Nevland 83min)

Scorers: Fulham: McBride 24, Nevland 90

Referee: R Styles

Attendance: 24,112