Ipswich Town v Fulham

WHAT TIME IS IT?
GAME TIME!
COME ON YOU WHITES!

 

Last season, they only lost to teams at the top of the table when at home. Leeds was the one exception. I'm thinking we'll lose 1-0. But who knows. I just can't wait for it to kick off so we can start evaluating and stop guessing.

 

I'll preface by saying I promised myself I'd be patient and not jump to too many early conclusions. So with that in mind, today wasn't so bad. There were some bright spots, but then there were some concerns as well.

The good. I thought we looked good early with David out there and again late when Roberts came on. Hyndman, overall, had a good game. He went overly cautious, imo, later in the first half and especially after David came off, but he looked really good again when Roberts came on. We were far less static with those two on the pitch, so that's probably the reason. Woodrow added a lot when he came on as a hold up man. He played a lot more one touch than McCormack attempted and we were better for it.

The obvious. We looked disorganized too often, especially in defense. Players didn't seem to know where to go to cover for one another. We got really stagnant and stopped making runs in the middle hour of the match. Set pc defense was nerve-wracking. These are all things I'd expect from a completely new side who haven't been together that long.

The concerns. First off, the starting lineup. I don't get why Magath would go so conservative and start both Parker and Burgess in midfield against a Mick McCarthy side. Had we gone with Parker or Burgess at cdm and then Hyndman, David and Roberts we'd have been much more attacking and probably created a lot more chances. The other concern, of course, is Parker. Too slow closing players down in defense and slowed down our attack most of the time. He did look better offensively late, after Roberts came on. But I still think he's a liability. We saw strikers, McCormack in particular, dropping back too deep to get the ball and then when he played it forward, we were short of options in the box. When he didn't drop back, we had trouble providing any service to the forwards. Deja vu. We left acres of space out wide in our end. Ipswich figured out they could just lob balls into those spaces and try to run onto them, either catching our fb's out or dragging our cb's out of position. The latter happened on their 2nd goal. That's a design flaw in the tactics. You can attack with fb's, but watch Everton for how to do it properly. Hutchinson had a real stinker and I was expecting much better from him. He had precious little support though...much like last year's defense. And then there's Joronen. Hopefully that was first match jitters or else we're going to need an upgrade there. Rumor is we were waiting to get Stek off the books before bringing in another gk. We'll see.

All in all, I wasn't surprised with the result. I expect it'll take time to get things sorted and we're probably looking at a mid-table finish. But there was a little too much deja vu from last season today for my liking.

 

Some highlights -> http://www.tvgolo.com/en/match-highlights-1407609433---40

 

So 10 players under the age of 20 played in the Championship this weekend. Fulham accounted for five of those 10.

 

48 hours after our first match of the season, one that was available for streaming live, and this is all the discussion we've got on it? Disappointing. Hopefully this isn't indicative of how it's going to be this season.

 

Soorrryyy.

This match felt like a preseason game, considering the lack of continuity amongst the team; plus myself and everyone watching it consistently saying “wait, who’s THAT guy?!?” Even after 30 minutes or so.

That said Magath’s penchant for perplexing starters and subs continues. I was willing to shrug it off last season but I’d hope things would be streamlined by now. The fella is a little bit nuts , and I still have no idea what to make of him.

Lastly a proper CDM and CL-level experienced GK is what we need come September. As much as I like the idea of Joronen, I don’t feel great about throwing a young, green GK in there. Someone like a Marcus Hahnemann of 3-4 years ago would be ideal.

Good thing there's still ... 42(?) more games so a loss like this isn't too disastrous

 

It's a bit early for conclusive judgments so I'll just offer a couple observations.

1. The young guys have existing chemistry and early on that may prove more valuable than individual experience.

2. Four new defenders in front of a new goalie will always need time to gel.

3. Cauley Woodrow doesn't need any more seasoning for the Championship and he should be starting. He has been around long enough for conclusive judgements.

4. Hyndman looks like a potential surgeon in the midfield.

5. If a player creates consistent havoc in the opposition's defensive third said player should get consistent minutes.

6. I hope there is not a REAL good reason that Magath was trying to buy another left-sided CB like Besler.

 

Yeah, Heather, I'd considered that.

Agree 100% with everything Timmy said, especially the 3rd paragraph. Imo, the cdm is the most important position on the field. It requires the broadest skillset, one of the highest workrates and is the one place you really can't hide weaknesses. It requires a strong positional sense and ability to read the game. If I were building a team, I'd want that position to be my best player and preferably my team leader. Since Murphy left it's seemed the like the most overlooked area on the team and one in which we've just stuck in pensioners. Agree as well with the gk. It's easier to integrate a rookie with an experienced back line, but with a new backline, it would have made sense to stick with an experienced and capable gk. We had that in Stockdale, who while I've said is very replaceable, has led a team to promotion at this level. Again, we'll see if someone else is brought in, but at this point it looks like shipping him out was unnecessary and somewhat foolish.

Good points by Barry as well. To #6, I assume Amorebieta is going to be shipped out this window and with a 46 game season that contains a lot of midweek games, you can't have too many cb's.

 

Where on the site can we find the stream? Will it only be available for a short time or up too a week after?

 

Never mind, found the stream.

 

Very good tactical analysis from Viva El Fulham using a number of areas that Statsbomb, etc look at. Usually with sites like Statsbomb, they focus on the bigger clubs, so doing something Fulham specific is nice. Here's a sample from the article, full article linked below.

"Most people expected the diamond, it being the formation du jour during preseason, but before the match it looked as though Magath had gone for a three back, with Cameron Burgess, Shaun Hutchinson and Nikolay Bodurov, all nominally center-backs, being named in the starting eleven. However Magath played Burgess in the holding role, and did so primarily for one reason: Ipswich's physicality. Mick McCarthy is known for physical football, and so it proved to be, with Ipswich racking up three yellow cards and 14 fouls during the match (and being quite happy to dive in and go for the ball). They also played two big forwards and pumped balls up to them,so Burgess was played in that role as a sort of higher defender than the two normal center backs, with a job to shield the back four and aid in keeping out the long balls that came in. The back four apart from that were relatively normal, with the two full-backs acting as wingers: indeed, it is interesting how far they got up, as their event heat map shows both fullbacks having plenty of time spent over the half-way line. They were also quite successful, creating four chances between them, launching counter attacks and being running options, and this really came out in the last few minutes. A bright point was the strength of the fullbacks and the options they offered.


The formation was designed to be quite fluid in its application, and it was notable to watch the midfield four switch around depending on where they were on the pitch. If Hyndman found himself out of position and unable to support an attack that had just swithched to his side, Burgess would step up or Parker would come short and Hyndman would fill in. Ross McCormack dropped and ran the channels wide, trying to offer something different down that side, whilst Dembele played the more traditional last man striker role, aiming always to beat his man, whether that be through getting in the box or in the air. Indeed, he almost managed just this, following in from a speculative Chris David effort to almost finish the spilled effort. It was always going to be hard to break down a regulated and disciplined four four two, but Fulham managed it increasingly in the last few minutes with a quick change of formation. Whereas we had relied totally on the full-backs for width before hand, the midfielders started to push a lot higher up the pitch and into the wider areas. The introduction of Patrick Roberts is typical of that. As soon as he came on we started to achieve two on one situations against full-backs, which is directly how we managed to score through Hoogland, and nearly garner a second through both Robert's shots. Below I've picked out some talking points from the match."

http://www.vivaelfulham.co.uk/articles/talking-tactics-ipswich-2-fulham-1-7-475.html