LEICESTER, England :Second-half strikes from Emile Smith Rowe and Adama Traore earned Fulham a 2-0 win at Leicester City on Saturday and condemned the hosts to a seventh straight Premier League loss.
Leicester, winless in the league for over six weeks, remained 19th in the table, while Fulham provisionally climbed to ninth.
“It was really difficult in the first half, they started quicker than us,” Fulham manager Marco Silva told the BBC.
“But we started the second half well with the goal and from there we built the win… it was a well-deserved three points.”
Fulham, who survived a shaky early moment when Timothy Castagne almost played Jamie Vardy’s cross into his own net, broke through in the 48th minute when Harry Wilson’s clipped cross found Sasa Lukic who headed it down for Smith Rowe to find the net with a low diving header.
An unmarked Traore doubled the visitors’ lead 20 minutes later when the Spaniard found the net from Wilson’s cross, as chants of “Leicester City’s going down” rang round the stadium.
Leicester had started positively, with Victor Kristiansen almost putting them ahead before the half-hour mark but the Danish defender’s curling effort missed the far post by a whisker.
Fulham soon took control with Alex Iwobi charging in from the left and floating the ball towards the near post and off the crossbar.
Two minutes later, Smith Rowe’s pass found Iwobi inside the box, but Wout Faes made a sliding block to deny the Nigerian.
After Fulham went ahead Leicester pushed hard for an equaliser, with keeper Bernd Leno’s timely dive keeping out Stephy Mavididi’s left-footed attempt from a tight angle in the 55th minute.
Jordan Ayew fired over the bar as the home fans roared him on, but the atmosphere in the arena was deflated when Traore struck.
“We deserved to be beaten, Fulham were the better team. It was disappointing in all aspects of the game,” said Leicester manager Ruud van Nistelrooy, who has won only one league game since being appointed in late November.
“We weren’t good enough in all aspects. This is the first game I’ve felt like this. In the other games I felt there were enough aspects to get a result and today there wasn’t.”
Leicester visit Tottenham Hotspur on Jan. 26, the same day Fulham host Manchester United.
