bwin Sportsblog - Football - A great night for Fulham

I never expected Fulham to get past the holders Shakhtar Donetsk last night. Winning the first leg 2-1 is not a good result and I always felt that Fulham needed to score to win the tie as I simply didn't feel that they could keep Shakhtar out for 90 minutes. But they did with a great 1-1 draw and now face Juventus in the last 16 after they beat Ajax over two legs. Liverpool eventually came through as well after going a goal down against Unirea Urziceni. That 3-1 win and 4-1 on aggregate sets up a match against Lille now in the last sixteen. Lille scored late on in their match in Turkey against Fernebahce and Liverpool will be happier going to France than Turkey. It will be another tough tie for Liverpool but I expect them to make the quarter-finals now and they are coming into form at the right time. I expected more from Everton last night and they never did themselves justice going down 3-0 in Lisbon to Sporting. Everton must be sick of the sight of that city after they lost 5-0 to Benfica in the group stages. David Moyes was clearly disappointed afterwards which leads you to think that he really wanted to do well in this competition. But traditionally English teams have not done well in this competition and even though it has been re-named......it is still essentially the UEFA Cup in my mind. Not since Liverpool in 2001 has an English team lifted this trophy. It could be Liverpool again and they have as a good a chance as anyone. But some dangerous sides were knocked out last night......Roma.....Shakhtar.....PSV and Villarreal all bit the dust. Some great sides left in though like Juventus, Marseilles, the big three German clubs in Hamburg, Werder Bremen and Wolfsburg with Sporting Lisbon and Benfica still being there. One sad note......Portsmouth go into administration this morning and that means a 9pt penalty in the league so effectively they are relegated now. This will make them 17pts adrift. What has happened at Fratton Park needs to be made public and lessons need to be learned to stop this kind of thing from happening to a top flight club ever again.