The one moment of true quality came when Raúl Jiménez stood 12 yards from goal and looked at John Victor. It was a battle of wits but there was only going to be one winner. Jiménez stuttered, moved towards the ball at a leisurely pace, waited for Nottingham Forest’s goalkeeper to move left and then set Fulham on the path to a vital victory by sending a clinical penalty into the opposite corner.
This was Jiménez in his element. The Mexican is not the quickest striker around but the 34-year-old is still one of the game’s sharpest thinkers. Few, after all, can match Jiménez for accuracy from the spot. He is calmness personified in those situations and, remarkably, is now joint top with Yaya Touré when it comes to players with a 100% conversion rate from penalty kicks in the history of the Premier League.
This was Jiménez’s 11th conversion out of 11 – Dimitar Berbatov, the former Manchester United and Fulham striker, is next best on nine from nine – and it was enough to pull Fulham 10 points clear of the bottom three. “In that moment he was cold,” Fulham’s manager, Marco Silva, said. “He’s a great penalty taker. He is not at his best but the last four games at home he scored twice and both goals gave us wins.”
