Recap: New stadium nausea leaves Fulham precarious
A bad weekend leaves Silva's side 1 point above the drop zone
They say that golf is a good walk ruined and sometimes attending a football match has a similar feeling. This weekend’s visit to the Hill Dickinson was one I’d been looking forward to since the fixtures were announced. A trip to the fine city of Liverpool and a brand new shiny stadium to tick off.
The Hill Dickinson, despite its awful name, didn’t disappoint. The walk isn’t even that bad either, I was expecting a lot worse. There are quite a lot of similarities with Spurs’ new ground, but I think if I had to choose one to be our stadium, I think I’d prefer Everton’s. It felt a little bit less shiny, in a good way. One criticism: some more urinals would be great.
Also, it was great to see such a large turnout of Fulham fans - it felt like an away end that would be a lot of fun IF we had had something to cheer about.
Anyway, I suppose we better talk about the football. Shocking. Up until this game I think you could make an argument that Fulham were competitive in every match, but that wasn’t the case on Saturday. Everton not only played the better football, but they also seemed to have more energy and desire too. A triple combination that rarely leads to a positive outcome.
It’s clear that the Sander/Sasa partnership should only be used in games where we want to park the bus. I get the theory, and have previously backed Marco in deploying them as a central midfield pairing, but I think that other teams have cottoned on to the fact that we have minimal attacking threat when they play together. Alex Iwobi fits the ‘8’ position like a glove, and that was clear to see in the second half when he was placed there.
I think it’s also clear that our striker situation is going to cost us a lot of points this season. Raul Jimenez has 1 league goal from 10 appearences (6 starts, 4 sub). Raul brings us a lot more than just goals and I respect him massively for the shift he’s putting in at 34, but he just does not offer a goal threat. Rodrigo Muniz being subbed-off sixteen minutes after he was subbed-on was my lowest moment of the season so far. You knew at that point, even though it was only 1-0 at the time, that the game was up. Samu Chukwueze is exciting, but he was never going to trouble Tarkowski and Keane in the centre-forward role.
Much of the criticism in our transfer business was about midfield, but with the benefit of hindsight, I think our striker situation is the bigger issue. It’s always tricky to keep three strikers happy in a one-striker system, but I do wonder if maybe we needed to be more ruthless with Raul and give Muniz a proper challenger. It goes without saying of course, that the Jonah Kusi-Asare situation is a complete mess.
As Owen McDonald recaps in his article, the situation in the table is looking precarious as just one point seperates us and the relegation zone. Realistically how many points do you expect us to get from the 4 games after the international break (Sunderland, Spurs, City, Palace)? None of them are easy.
On Sunday, I was asked on Talksport if I’m worried about Fulham going down, my immediate answer was ‘no’ because I believe there are three worse teams (Wolves, Leeds and Burnley). However, it was maybe a bit of a hasty answer, because beyond those three I’m not sure who else you could definitely say we’re superior to. Forest and West Ham are picking themselves off the canvas, and I think we have a fight on our hands to stay above them.
Stephen Sheldrake was on Player Ratings duty and he had the arduous task of picking a Man Of The Match. He chose Calvin Bassey, but in all honesty it was one of those games where nobody deserved the MOTM nod. My choice might have been Josh King, because I felt like he looked positive when he came on, but in all honesty, there wasn’t much in it.
After the match, myself and Elizabeth took on the Quick Take and the large amount of comments from Everton fans has been interesting to read. Many of them seemed surprised by Fulham’s poor performance, given recent strong showings away against the Toffees.
Elizabeth is back on the podcast with Yasmin, Dan and Avais recapping what went wrong on Saturday. Nothing like a two week break to stew over Fulham’s problems.