A fan loitered, waiting to kiss Roy Hodgson. The Fulham manager obliged. His team had, after all, played romantic football. It was glass half-full football, happy football, while Bolton Wanderers seemed to perform as if they had just been jilted.

“Our midfield is a very skilful one, there is not a destroyer,” Hodgson said, adding that the lack of one was of his own choosing. “Jimmy Bullard and Danny Murphy played a major part in our survival last season and it would have been very harsh if they had come back and found I had some newfound philosophy.”

The Fulham midfield also comprises Simon Davies and Zoltan Gera, expressive players with an eye for the audacious pass. It was Gera who gave Fulham the lead after Bolton had failed to clear a cross from Bobby Zamora.

All the pretty stuff is meaningless without a capable strike force, but Zamora and Andrew Johnson could become one of the more coveted pairings in the division. Johnson was at his sprightly best and Zamora was brimming with the sort of confidence that invites a player to try a drag-back and fire into the far corner, which is what the striker did before half-time.

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Bolton did not even attempt to match Fulham’s joie de vivre, but did unsettle them when Jussi Jaaskelainen’s long kick was met by Kevin Davies, whose header floated in. “It was a scary time,” Gera said of the last ten minutes and it could have had the effect of waking the Craven Cottage faithful from a beautiful dream.

Instead, Hodgson’s team kept skipping along and Davies had the chance to add the flourish of a third. He failed, but few should interpret that as a sign the romance may end.

Fulham (4-4-2): M Schwarzer 6 – J Paintsil 6, A Hughes 6, B Hangeland 6, P Konchesky 6 – S Davies 6, J Bullard 6, D Murphy 6, Z Gera 7 – A Johnson 7 (sub: Seol Ki Hyeon, 75min), R Zamora 8 (sub: E Nevland, 85). Substitutes not used: P Zuberbühler, Andranik Teymourian, F Stoor, C Dempsey, T Kallio. Booked: Seol.

Bolton Wanderers (4-1-4-1): J Jaaskelainen 5 – G Steinsson 5 (sub: H Helguson, 64 5), D Shittu 5, A O’Brien 5, J Samuel 4 – F Muamba 4 – J O’Brien 5, K Nolan 4, G McCann 4 (sub: M Riga, 51 5), R Gardner 5 – K Davies 6. Substitutes not used: A Al Habsi, N Hunt, R Vaz Té, T Cohen, J Fojut. Booked: Nolan.

Referee S Tanner Attendance 23,656