In a battle of two of the favourites for automatic promotion from the Championship season, there was a resounding success for Fulham who made it four wins on the bounce against West Bromwich Albion.

Both teams went into the Saturday lunchtime match on the back of victories last weekend, but the Baggies were powerless to stop the Cottagers on this occasion.

Of course it was all down to one man in the end and that was Aleksandar Mitrovic who fired in a hat-trick against Valerien Ismael's side, but the Fulham defence played an important role as well to keep the visitors at bay.

Let's look at THREE things we learnt from watching the London outfit's demolition job of West Brom.

 

 

 

 

Mitrovic is inevitable

Aleksandar Mitrovic and the Championship go hand in hand - they're simply the perfect match.

The Serb didn't have the best campaign in 2020-21 in the top flight under Scott Parker, but he's proving that he still has that touch of class after firing in a hat-trick against the Baggies.

One of the goals was absolutely gifted to him by Robert Snodgrass but you have to be in the right place at the right time and he specialises in doing that.

Mitrovic's goalscoring record for the season now stands at 18 goals in 15 matches - that's quite simply remarkable and at his current rate he will score over 50 goals in the Championship by the end of the season, unless someone makes a bid that Fulham accept in January...

The strength in depth is frightening

With Fulham 3-0 up in the second half, Marco Silva took the chance to bring off three of his players with less than 10 minutes to go - and the substitutions just proved that their squad is scary.

Mitrovic, Harrison Reed and Neeskens Kebano came off and on came summer recruit Rodrigo Munoz, as well as teenage prodigy Fabio Carvalho and the experienced Tom Cairney.

That's a quality trio to be able to call upon and if they were on the pitch for a bit longer more goals could have been in the offing, but they got some minutes in their legs ahead of the midweek fixtures.

Tosin isn't perfect

There can't really be a question that Tosin Adarabioyo is one of the best defenders in the Championship, but he showed a bit of an ugly side to his game when he was sent off in the second half.

The centre-back crunched into the back of Grady Diangana with a bit of a horror tackle and was deservedly given a straight red card, meaning that he will miss Fulham's next three matches.

That will be a blow for Silva who now can't call upon his pace, athleticism and height which compliments Tim Ream very well, and after seeing the tackle he put in on Diangana it's clearly something he's got to work on and eliminate from his game.