Why Timothy Fosu-Mensah’s Fulham season is mirroring his Crystal Palace spell

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When Fulham signed Manchester United’s Timothy Fosu-Mensah on loan over the summer, many greeted the news as a shrewd acquisition of a promising young defender.

Yet after starting the season as the club’s first-choice right back, Fosu-Mensah has fallen out of favour under Claudio Ranieri — a situation that closely mirrors the 20-year-old’s spell at Crystal Palace last year.

The Dutchman joined on transfer deadline day and after sitting out Fulham’s opening match against Palace, started four of the club’s next five matches.

A shoulder injury suffered against Everton kept Fosu-Mensah out for a couple of matches, before his underwhelming return in poor performances against Bournemouth and Huddersfield.

And in Ranieri’s first two matches in charge in SW6, the Manchester United loanee has been completely left out of the squad, with Cyrus Christie taking his place at the back.

At Selhurst Park, the defender started the first six games of Palace’s 2017/18 season — suffering defeat in each match. While Fosu-Mensah played intermittently through the rest of the season, he played just two minutes out of the Eagles’ final ten league matches.

In a recurring theme for Timothy Fosu-Mensah, the right back starts out his loan spell brightly before falling down the pecking order — a pattern repeated both at Selhurst Park and Craven Cottage.