Mitchell scored his first Premier League goals in 36 games, and then his replacement won it
Tyrick Mitchell scored twice at Craven Cottage, came off on 74 minutes, and watched Ben Chilwell finish the comeback three minutes later.
Sep 6, 2026
Tyrick Mitchell had played 36 Premier League games without scoring. On Saturday at Craven Cottage he scored twice inside 20 minutes, and then, on 74 minutes, Pierre Sage took him off. The man who replaced him was Ben Chilwell, another left-back, signed this month to compete for the same shirt. Three minutes later Chilwell scored the winner. Crystal Palace came from behind twice to beat Fulham 3-2, and every one of their goals came from a left-back.
Fulham led twice and are still on nothing
Josh King put Fulham ahead on 11 minutes and Cesar Palacios restored the lead on 42, which for a side with no points from their opening two games should have been the afternoon turning their way. It was not. Fulham are 19th with nothing from three matches, and Alvaro Arbeloa, who took the job in July, now has to take a team that has led in this game for over half an hour into the rest of September.
Palace were not much better for long stretches. Sage said so himself afterwards. “I am not happy with the way we defended, we have a lot of things to move,” he said, and then added the line every manager reaches for when the performance and the result do not match: “The result is positive but I am aware of the game, but sometimes it is like this, you have to take the points.”
Mitchell’s 20 minutes
The first goal started with Eddie Nketiah. Mitchell broke down the left, Nketiah slipped it to him, and he drove it past Bernd Leno at the near post. “Eddie passed it to me and I heard him scream ‘shoot’,” Mitchell said. The second, on 54 minutes, was scruffier. His contact was not clean, but it was enough to send Leno the wrong way and the ball went in.
Two goals in a game was a first in his career. He has been at Palace since the academy, he was part of the side that won the FA Cup, and he had gone 36 league appearances without troubling a goalkeeper before this one.
Chilwell’s second Palace debut
Chilwell’s return has a neat symmetry to it. He first came to Selhurst Park on loan from Chelsea in the back half of 2024-25 and won the FA Cup with them at Wembley. He spent last season at Strasbourg, made 34 appearances, and came back this month on a permanent deal. His first act as a Palace player second time round was to come off the bench and score a winner at Craven Cottage.
It is Sage’s first Premier League win. He arrived in June from French football, where he had managed Lyon and Lens, and Palace’s start had been grim enough that the question was already being asked. Three points at Fulham does not answer it. Palace sit 13th with three points from three, which is a return, not a recovery. But a manager who wins his first one with a substitute’s goal, three minutes after making the change, gets to enjoy the walk to the tunnel more than most.