Ryan Sessegnon perhaps had a point to make. He was 19 when, five years ago, he left Fulham for Tottenham. Having missed all of last season after surgery on both hamstrings, he returned on a free in the ­summer ­having started only 26 league games for Spurs.

Sessegnon has not made a huge impression this season but, with two minutes remaining, as Ben Davies dithered under a bouncing ball, he brushed him aside and whipped a precise right-footed finish into the top corner, securing both Fulham’s win and, with his first goal at ­Craven Cottage since Boxing Day 2018, a measure of personal vindication.

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It feels like there might be a lot of this between now and the end of the season. The title is settled and rele­gation effectively resolved which means all that remains is the squabble over European ­qualification.

The result was a strange, ­three‑quarter‑pace game. It would be unfair to say both sides were going through the motions but, equally, this was not the most intense game you would see. It had seemed a phenomenon many thought impossible: a game even Angeball could not make ­interesting. Spurs’ defending, though, can ­conjure goals from anything. “We had a bit of control and we concede a soft goal,” Ange Postecoglou said. “It’s another game we let get away from us.”

The game had seemed to be ­drifting to stalemate when Spurs twice failed to clear, and Andreas Pereira reacted sharply to control Adama Traoré’s jab into the box and then shovel the ball on to Rodrigo Muniz, who rolled a neat finish just beyond the ­scrabble of Gugliemo Vicario. His fellow substitute Sessegnon ­finished off the job 10 minutes later.

“It was a really emotional game for him,” Marco Silva, Fulham’s manager, said. “For Ryan it was really difficult. Everybody expected a bright future for him, but in football sometimes you have downs. He did not have fortune with injuries. He’s going to be even more important in the future.”

Fulham had rather more on the line than Spurs and it showed. The win lifted them to eighth, still outside likely European qualification but within three points of a ­Champions League. Just as significantly, ­perhaps, the game served as an audition for Silva if Postecoglou is shuffled out in the summer and if he is interested in taking the job. The two exchanged a notably protracted hug before kick‑off, Postecoglou laughing as his right arm waved animatedly. You could only imagine what he was saying: “Don’t take it, mate. It’s an absolute shambles.”

Rodrigo Muniz puts Fulham in front in the 78th minute. Photograph: Isabel Infantes/Reuters

Tottenham are not one of those sides chasing Europe through league placing, their potential route to the Champions League lying through the Europa League. That is now clearly the priority, with the result that their side featured seven changes from the win against AZ Alkmaar on Thursday. Given how many injuries Spurs have endured this season, how exhausted they have appeared at times, that was an understandable decision: rotation is either necessary or it’s not.

With no James Maddison, Dejan Kulusevski or Lucas Bergvall, Tottenham were always going to struggle for creativity. The double change at half-time, Heung-min Son and ­Bergvall coming on for Brennan Johnson and Yves Bissouma seemed more a reaction to that early flatness that a planned move to spread the minutes around. Bergvall’s 52nd-minute cross led to Spurs’ first real chance, ­Dominic Solanke heading just wide.

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This was the third game in five in which Bissouma was withdrawn at half-time. “Biss sometimes lets games drift by him,” Postecoglou said. Given 12 players have played more minutes than him this season and he has one year left on his contract, it would be little surprise were he to be offloaded in the summer.

Replacing him in Spurs’ midfield, perhaps, could be Archie Gray who, on his 13th league start for the club, at last was used in his preferred position. The 19-year-old is a player of exceptional talent as he demonstrated by completing more than 90% of his passes and will surely in time make the deep-lying midfield role his own. But his most significant contribution was defensive, hacking the ball clear from inside the six-yard box as Spurs withstood an extended period of Fulham pressure in the ­minutes leading up to half-time.

Otherwise there was very little for Spurs to take from the game. For Fulham, though, the prospect of a return to European competition is real. Five points separate fourth from 10th; there might not be much to play for elsewhere but upper midtable is shaping up to be a real dogfight.

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