"Unbelievable. Everyone likes a last-minute goal. I'm just grateful I got it today," the winger told Match of the Day. "I have done it before. I just try to make an impact every time I step on the pitch. That's what the gaffer wanted me to do. God willing, it paid off today."

The Portuguese star has managed to fit a lot into his career by the age of 23. He made his 100th career league appearance in February and has scored in the league and Carabao Cup already this term.

He was just 18 wen he scored his first Premier League goal for boyhood club Fulham, making him the third-youngest scorer in the 2020-21 season, and scored 10 Championship goals the following year as the Cottagers bounced straight back as league winners. His best seasons have come in the second tier, with a loan spell at Hull also catching the eye and earning him a £27.5m move to Brentford.

Carvalho's career hasn't been without controversy, though he can't be held responsible for some of the goings-on. And it was his move to Fulham as a teenager - rather than any of his later moves - where questions first arose.

Fulham added Carvalho to their academy in December 2014 after a spell at Balham Blazers, a non-league London outfit. Fulham made a payment to Balham when Carvalho moved to Liverpool, with the transfer getting them into hot water with the Premier League.

The Cottagers are said to have "accepted breaches of the Premier League rules in relation to player registrations," per a Premier League statement published in April 2024. They were fined £75,000 and were handed six-month ban (suspended for one year) from registering any academy players currently or previously registered with another club.

By that stage, his time at Liverpool was coming to an end. A spell on loan at RB Leipzig hadn't produced the results the player or club wanted, but he was showing enough at Hull to convince Brentford to take the plunge.

Carvalho's frustrations at Anfield were well-documented. Goals against Bournemouth and Newcastle in back-to-back games in August 2022 felt like the start of something big, but it wasn't to be.

He played just eight minutes of league football after the turn of the year, along with a solitary minute against Real Madrid in the Champions League. His senior career in Liverpool red consisted of just 640 minutes of football, a little over half of that in the league, and he wasn't afraid to let then-manager Jurgen Klopp know how he felt.

"This was not Fabio's best year of his career, clearly, in a very young career, but it might have been his most important," Klopp said at the tail end of the 2022-23 season. Around the same time, Carvalho appeared to make a pointed remark on Instagram about his lack of game time when he indicated modelling was "All I do now."

Klopp left Liverpool at the end of the 2023/24 season, and a philosophical Carvalho ended up reflecting on his lack of communication with the German. "Yes, I spoke to him," Carvalho said. "Spoke to him not a lot, if I'm being honest with you. Maybe I should have done that, I have should have done that a bit more."

While he never got the chance to show his qualities to Arne Slot, he has got his Premier League chance off the back of his nine goals in 20 appearances at Hull. There were injury issues in his first season at the Gtech Community Stadium, but he scored in wins over Wolves and Leicester and has made a fast start this term.

He now has Keith Andrews as his manager and the former Ireland midfielder's early comments will be music to his ears. "Fabio is someone who I feel for, that he probably hasn't had as many minutes as he deserves, because his application to his craft and his dedication to his craft is pretty special," Andrews said after the weekend draw with Chelsea.

"I know he's a goalscorer, so it was nice when he popped up with that late goal, obviously. With Fabio, I've just asked for a little bit of patience, because I truly believe he'll be a big player for his club."

This weekend, Carvalho will go back to where it started as Brentford take on Fulham at Craven Cottage. It will be a chance to show just how far he's come after what has been anything but a smooth path.

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Ex-Liverpool star at centre of controversial transfer can haunt old club after Jurgen Klopp regret - The Mirror