Blackburn Rovers overcame losing Yakubu to a straight red card early in the first half to absolutely thump a miserable Fulham side at Ewood Park. Despite seeing their leading scorer dismissed following a silly high challenge on Danny Murphy in the 23rd minute, the hosts regrouped and struck in devastating fashion on either side of the interval. Morten Gamst Peterson lashed a brilliant free kick in first half injury time to give Rovers a surprise lead, and Fulham were still reeling when David Dunn poked a rebound past David Stockdale within a minute of the second half kicking off.
Damien Duff pulled a goal back for the visitors after weaving his way into the box and dispatching Paul Robinson with a nice right-footed shot, and although Fulham pressed for an equaliser it was Blackburn who got the next goal as substitute Mauro Formica finished things off with ten minutes to play. A 3-1 loss to a full-strength Blackburn would be bad enough for the Cottagers, but when they were playing against ten men for more than an hour? Martin Jol is not going to be a happy man. Steve Kean's bunch, on the other hand, will be thrilled at having finally hauled themselves out of the relegation zone. Maybe there's life in this Blackburn season yet?