Cue the wild celebrations in the Birmingham hotel where the Wolves squad celebrated another team’s goal like never before. Deep into four added minutes at Craven Cottage, and just as Nuno Espírito Santo’s side presumably had resigned themselves to keeping the party on hold, the Brentford substitute Neal Maupay snatched an equaliser to break Fulham hearts and hand Wolves passage into the Premier League. Without even kicking a ball, they had done it.
Once confirmation filtered through to the Midlands, Santo jigged, high-fiving Julio Figueroa before hugging his first-team coach, as the players erupted with joy. After leading the Championship since 18 November, Wolves could finally toast promotion, and a return to the top flight after six years away. The real party, however, will take place at Molineux , when Wolves entertain Birmingham, who are still battling relegation.
As players and staff bounced, sang and embraced, Fulham were still coming to terms with a galling draw that seemed like a defeat, even if it extended their extraordinary unbeaten run to 21 matches. “I love @nealmaupay18,” tweeted the Wolves club captain, Danny Batth.
More straightforwardly, the Wolves managing director, Laurie Dalrymple, said: “We are thrilled. This is a culmination of a huge amount of hard work from the players, coaching team, management team and the fans. Everyone’s hugely elated, we are keeping a reasonable lid on it because we have got a game tomorrow but we are not understating our excitement about what we have achieved.”
With four games to play, Fulham still have hopes of joining them. They were heading back to second place after a wonderful finish by Aleksandar Mitrovic, but they did not have it all their own way against a slick Brentford. After soaring into the top two earlier this week, Fulham are staring back up at Cardiff City, who sit one point above them with a game in hand.
It was always going to be a charged evening, with Brentford making the five-mile trip and Slavisa Jokanovic’s side acutely aware that anything but a home win would not only help Wolves, but also severely dent their own automatic promotion hopes. The manager can only hope the damage caused by the late leveller is not lasting.
“Tomorrow we are going to be OK, we are going to rest and be ready for the next challenge,” Jokanovic said. “I am not a depressive man, I am very positive. I don’t have time for crying or complaints, I only have time to support my team to recover, and to push hard for the next game ahead of us.”
If they were not already feeling the pressure when the news Cardiff had won at Carrow Road filtered through there were, predictably, groans. To make matters worse, Fulham made an unconvincing start, with Romaine Sawyers drilling wide and Ollie Watkins rounding Marcus Bettinelli only to be wrongly flagged offside, before Florian Jozefzoon forced the Fulham goalkeeper into another stop.
Dean Smith, the Brentford manager, had pledged this would be a “mouth-watering” game given both teams’ expansive styles, and so it proved. It was enough to lure Hugh Grant too, with the actor in the crowd at Craven Cottage. By half-time, Bettinelli had palmed over from Yoann Barbet, who headed over moments after it.
Smith then introduced Maupay off the bench but it was Mitrovic, anonymous until 20 minutes from time, who drew first blood. Stefan Johansen picked him out on the edge of the box and the on-loan striker wrapped his left boot around the ball to open the scoring. Maupay nodded home in injury time to ruin the mood and he wheeled away in front of the delirious Bees supporters. It was a goal that also kept their slim play-off hopes alive.
“I thought it was the least we deserved, especially first half,” Smith said. “We are still four points off it, there are still teams to play each other. We’ve been playing catch-up because we didn’t win for the first eight [league] games.”
