Could changing Alex Iwobi's role re-ignite his form?

By moving our midfielder to the middle of the park, we could get the impact of a new signing.

Until Rodrigo Muniz’s equaliser on Saturday, Fulham had generated the second lowest xG in the first round of Premier League fixtures. Only Aston Villa had lower - and they played the last half an hour with 10 men.

It’s a continuation of what we’ve already seen in 2025, which is a Fulham attack that has gone a bit stale. We’ve become predictable. Our trademark move of manipulating situations on the left flank to engineer a cross into the box can be so effective. However, it’s become our only way of creating chances.

At the heart of this is Alex Iwobi; our chief creator. Last season he finished top in our squad for: expected assists, key passes, passes into the box and progressive passes. Against Brighton it was a similar story. We had seven shots, four of them as a result of Iwobi passes from the left flank and one of them a shot of his own. He had a direct involvement in 71% of our shots.

Despite this, I think we’re all mostly in agreement that he didn’t play particularly well? In fact, he hasn’t done so in a long time. Herein lies our problem. Last season Iwobi generated a higher expected assists per 90 minutes than Smith Rowe, Lukic, and Berge added together. There’s far too much reliance on that left flank and far too little central threat. It’s predictable, and therefore easy to defend.

One solution is to drop Iwobi in an attempt to get him to rediscover his spark and democratise our chance creation. However, a different, potentially more impactful, option would be to change his role.

Iwobi in the eight

We signed Alex from Everton the season after he had won their player’s player of the season, a campaign in which he made the majority of his appearances in central midfield roles. As we have seen at Fulham, he topped the charts for creative metrics, he also had more touches than everyone apart from James Tarkowski and carried the ball considerably further than any of his teammates. Crucially, he also made the third most tackles in their squad. He was the forward thinking number eight that we have been screaming for.

From both watching him and looking at his data, Alex Iwobi is a ball magnet. Which is fantastic, I love footballer’s who want the ball and want to contribute. At the moment though, he’s dragging the ball out into narrow corridors of well occupied space out wide. The opposition know this and because of our lack of central threat, are able to overcommit bodies in that corner.

Suddenly, if he’s moved 25 yards infield, he’s causing a different problem. As discussed, I don’t think he’ll see any less of the ball, but now he’ll have it in much more dangerous positions. We need someone to break the lines into the final third from the middle of the park. It puts your opponents in a much trickier position, suddenly they can’t double up on our left flank, because they’ll leave pockets of space in the middle. Suddenly, we’re not one dimensional, we’re playing football in 3D, able to shift left, right or keep it central. Iwobi has it on his CV that he is capable of doing this.

Too gung-ho?

How would we accommodate this is the big question? It would probably leave us with Iwobi, King, Smith Rowe, and Wilson all playing behind a striker, with either Sasa or Sander doing a lot of dirty work off the ball. As we’ve seen in pre-season, Smith Rowe could flourish on the left wing especially in tandem with Josh King. It would be a team overflowing with attacking threat, utilising the whole of the final third to curate opportunities, rather than the same congested little box by the corner flag.

Alex is also capable of the dirty work, as seen by his tackling stats at Everton. It’s not the same as suggesting playing ESR there, for example. To me, it’s more akin to when we’ve played Andreas there. Maybe not his natural position, but tenacious enough to make it work, and Iwobi gives you more going forward.

Either one of Lukic or Berge is capable of taking on the responsibility of protecting us against transitions. In an ideal world we’d be able to morph them into one player, our new Joao Palhinha. Lukic has the brain, Berge the brawn, so it’s hard to separate them, but I’d probably lean towards Sasa, who has learned so much about being a holding midfielder under Marco.

Look, it is pretty ballsy and if deployed at the wrong time, frankly naive.

We all want lots of attackers doing lots of fun things, but this is not a video game. You need balance. Is Manchester United at home the right game for this system? Most probably not.

However, there are home games on the horizon where the onus will be on Fulham to play all of the football. We will have the majority of possession and if we don’t shift things around, Leeds and Brentford will be pretty happy to block our wide threat and try and snatch one on the counter. These games present the opportunity to establish a rejuvenated attacking potency, without adding any new signings.

Perversely, Alex Iwobi appears to be both the cause of, and the solution to, our monotony. A new role for him could make a big difference.