Cardiff City 0-2 Fulham LIVE! Championship play-off semi-final first leg as it happened

Cardiff City 0-2 Fulham LIVE!

Wonderfully taken goals from Josh Onomah and Neeskens Kebano gave Fulham a 2-0 win at Cardiff City in the first leg of their Championship Play-Off semi-final on Monday.

The Cottagers, relegated from the Premier League last season, will look to complete the job in the return leg at Craven Cottage on Thursday to earn a place in the final at Wembley.

Onomah collected the ball on the edge of the box with his back to goal and sharply turned before jinking past two Cardiff defenders and calmly slotting home in the 49th minute.

Fulham grabbed firm control of the tie in stoppage time when Kebano superbly curled a free-kick from the edge of the box into the top corner.

Follow the game LIVE with Standard Sport!

Can't see the Cardiff vs Fulham, Championship play-off LIVE blog? Click here for the desktop version.

Date, time and venue

Cardiff vs Fulham is scheduled for a 7:45pm BST kick-off on Monday, July 27, 2020.

The match will be behind closed doors at the Cardiff City Stadium with no fans due to be present due to government guidelines regarding coronavirus.

Team news

Cardiff: Smithies, Bacuna, Morrison, Nelson, Bennett, Pack, Ralls, Mendez-Laing, Tomlin, Hoilett, Glatzel

Subs: Etheridge, Sanderson, Flint, Vaulks, Murphy, Paterson, Bamba, Ward, Smith

Fulham: Rodak, Christie, Hector, Ream, Bryan, Cairney, Reed, Knockaert, Onomah, Kebano, Reid

Subs: Bettinelli, Odoi, Mawson, McDonald, Johansen, Le Marchand, Sessegnon, Kamara, Jasper

Referee: Geoff Eltringham

How to watch

TV channel: The match will be shown live on Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Football, and is available via Now TV with a day pass for £9.99, or a three-month pass on offer for £25.

Live stream: Sky Sports subscribers can stream the match online via SkyGo and the SkyGo app, with a mobile month pass available for £5.99.

Prediction: Cardiff 1-2 Fulham

Both sides enter the play-offs in strong post-lockdown form, with Cardiff having won six of their last nine matches and Fulham boasting five victories in seven.

Cardiff - who languished in 14th place when Neil Harris succeeded Neil Warnock in the dugout in November - have lost just three times on home soil in the Championship all season, while only five teams can lay claim to a better away record than Fulham.

The hosts’ chances of taking a positive result back to Craven Cottage for the second leg on July 30 could largely depend on how effective they are in shackling the threat of the division’s top scorer Aleksandar Mitrovic, who netted in both league matches between these teams during the regular season.

The absence of a fervent home crowd for such an important contest is a real blow for Cardiff, whose manager has attempted to heap pressure on Fulham ahead of this first leg by positioning his team as the plucky underdog against a big-spending opponent.

Parker’s men to shade a typically tense play-off affair and take a narrow lead back to the Cottage.

Head to head (h2h) history and results

These two clubs have met on 66 previous occasions, with Fulham leading the way in terms of wins, 28-25. There have been 13 draws.

They drew 1-1 in Cardiff in August before Fulham ran out 2-0 winners at Craven Cottage earlier this month, courtesy of a goal in each half from Mitrovic and Josh Onomah.

We may earn commission from some of the links in this article, but we never allow this to influence our content. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Evening Standard.