Fulham USA: US Supporters club of Fulham FC

Both Martin Jol and Steve Clarke described today’s match as “must win.” So, naturally, it wound up a draw. Both sides worked hard and, although Fulham were certainly the more unlucky in front of goal, a draw was a fair result over the run of play.

Fulham fielded a side filled with potential scapegoats: Richardson, Ruiz, Berbatov, Sidwell, and Arch Scapegoat Senderos. West Brom decided to keep their main danger man on the sub’s bench and so the answer to the big question in the run-up to the match, “Who will have to mark Sinclair?” turned out to be “Clarke” – for at least the first hour or so. Victor Anichebe did feature and, for the first half, engaged in a very entertaining duel with Philippe Senderos.

Last season, Steve Clarke was the only manager in the Premier League who didn’t know that the way to stifle Fulham was to pressure our slow attackers and stop us from turning. As a result, we got six points from them that a better organized Albion might have kept for themselves....

If you read the various blogs and forums across the Fulham universe, you'll see "this is the strongest Fulham side we've had" quite often. Much like in politics, sometimes a statement is made over and over enough that it begins to take root as fact. I submit that's the case here. On paper, yeah, it probably should be. However, upon closer inspection, when you factor in age and production, maybe it really isn't. While the differences in approach to offense muddies the comparison, I submit that Mark Hughes' 2010-2011 side was the better one. Lets take a look at it position by position.

GK - Schwarzer (Stockdale) v Stekelenburg (Stockdale) - Despite his distribution issues, I give the edge to Schwarzer. Mark posted 11 clean sheets and 94 saves in 31 starts. Due to injury, we only have one game from Stekelenburg to draw an opinion. His highest clean sheet total at Roma was 7 in 29 starts. ADV - Schwarzer

RB - Paintsil/Baird v Riether - Baird had 25 starts in various...

St. James Park on Saturday was host to two teams who prefer to wear black and white, two teams who have restless supporters and managers under the microscope, and two teams for whom “entertainment” is a word they know but have trouble associating with football. For 45 minutes those two teams – Newcastle United and Fulham FC – produced a first half of football that was dire enough to send this observer to get some eye drops to wash away the memory of it. Neither team showed any inclination to take over the game, and neither showed the skill or teamwork to accomplish it even if they had the inclination. Fulham did have a good 10 minutes or so there about halfway through the first 45, but the only real shot on goal was one from The Barcodes from great distance.

In the second half, one team came out with a different attitude and different tactics, and basically took control of the match with a scintillating display of attacking football. The team that DIDN’T was Fulham. And so Fulham...