FA Cup: Fulham - 1 Wycombe Wanderers - 0: Wycombe's dream of a second successive semi-final is over but they put Fulham through more than an hour of frustration last night before losing a goal and a man in the final 21 minutes, with Barry Hayles the match-winner.
A combination of Wycombe's obdurate defending and Fulham's lack of invention kept things goalless until Steed Malbranque won possession from Steve Brown and fed Hayles, who showed good footwork before scoring with a low shot.
Within minutes Jason Cousins was sent off after picking up a second yellow card for a foul on Hayles, and Fulham might have had three more in the closing minutes of a match in which Wycombe rarely looked likely to score.
Fulham had needed an 88th-minute equaliser from Steve Marlet to avoid the ignominy of going out to their Second Division opponents in the initial tie at Adams Park but few expected them to slip up here.
Although Wycombe showed last season that they are capable of Cup brilliance by beating Leicester and three First Division teams, the boomakers made them 8 to 1 to triumph. Even their manager Lawrie Sanchez was pessimistic. "You only ever get one bite against a Premiership side," he insisted.
Sure enough, Louis Saha was not far wide of giving Fulham the lead inside five minutes, neatly engineering space for a shot from the edge of the area. And the pattern of the first half was soon set, with Fulham enjoying virtually all the possession and pressure without creating anything of note or managing an effort on target to test Wycombe's goalkeeper Martin Taylor.
Saha's speed made him an early menace, and only a boot in the face prevented the French striker from running clean through on goal on the quarter-hour. He was accelerating on to a bouncing ball near the halfway line until Chris Vinnicombe kicked him in the nose in attempting to intervene. The defender was booked; Saha departed to be replaced by Marlet.
Although Wycombe were seeing little of the ball they were an occasional threat on the counter-attack. The main pattern, though, saw Fulham trying to prise their way through a physical and increasingly comfortable Wycombe.
Jean Tigana's players have struggled to score goals in the Premiership and they were finding clear chances hard to come by here despite plenty of pressure.
A shot by Sean Davis which floated harmlessly over early in the second half seemed to sum up Fulham's problem. Wycombe were happy to pull 10 men behind the ball and Tigana's team were increasingly frustrated and struggling to find an answer.
Their best hope lay in stretching Wycombe down the flanks rather than trying to weave through a crowded centre but there was too little width, with Luis Boa Morte or the full-backs rarely delivering crosses from behind defenders.
Malbranque, their biggest threat, did force a save out of Martin Taylor, but by then Stuart Roberts had tested Maik Taylor at the other end. And when Marlet put the ball in the net, he was ruled offside.
Then, finally, Hayles struck.
FULHAM: Taylor, Finnan, Brevett, Melville, Goma, Knight (Stolcers 67), Malbranque, Davis, Saha (Marlet 21), Hayles, Boa Morte. Subs Not Used: Hahnemann, Betsy, Trollope. Booked: Finnan, Brevett. Goals: Hayles 68.
WYCOMBE: Taylor, Vinnicombe, Cousins, Rogers, Ryan, Carroll (Roberts 42), Currie, Simpson, Brown (Lee 71), Bulman, McSporran (Devine 79). Subs Not Used: Osborn, Johnson. Sent Off: Cousins (75). Booked: Vinnicombe, Cousins, Bulman, Brown, Roberts.
Referee: G Barber (Tring).
