Fulham hosts Tottenham on Sunday with kick off at 9am EST on USA Network.
These are dark days at Tottenham. They are in the worst form in the league. Their manager was sacked. They haven't yet had a league victory in 2026. They are just four points outside of relegation. The two teams below them have been playing better and quckly closing the gap. All that ads up to a certain Tottenham victory against Fulham on Sunday! Because Fulham is where trends go to die. Unless you are Manchester City, expect whatever has been happening to not happen any more against Fulham.
Tottenham has some quality players, but it hasn't added up to success recently. Tottenham will probably feel like they deserved more goals than what they got in their 1-4 loss to Arsenal, but the new manager made some weird choices - Palhinha in a back three?? He also didn't seem to have the respect of the players. They've had another week now to get things straightened out, so what will actually happen with Tottenham is a mystery.
I haven't yet seen the injury update, but we'll be eager to get a status report on Kevin. He's been looking better in recent weeks, but it won't be surprising if he is out due to injury. If he can't play, then hopefully Chukwueze is back, but if he isn't available having Bobb on the left isn't a bad option either.
Fulham should win this one, but that probably means they won't? I really want to see Fulham embarrass Tottenham, but Fulham rarely gets big wins. Like most weeks this will probably be a tight match that hangs in the balance to the final whistle.
In Marco's interview today, he said Kevin was out but did not say for how long. Jedi, Chuk, and Lukic are all back and in contention.
Got to beat Tottenham this weekend--a better opportunity won't soon come again.
Aaaand according to Fulham’s Instagram Kevin is likely to have surgery and be out several weeks. Broken metatarsal.
Aaaand according to Fulham’s Instagram Kevin is likely to have surgery and be out several weeks. Broken metatarsal.
Booo! He's going to miss a big chunk of the rest of the season, but this makes Bobb an even more important addition if Fulham is going to finish strong.
As bad as Tottenham have been recently and despite the six places in the table between them, Fulham and Spurs are virtually even. Fulham have turned in four more victories where Tottenham only achieved a draw. But they both have 12 losses, both have allowed 41 goals, and Fulham have netted one more goal than Spurs (38 to 37). I don’t see this match being anything other than tight.
That said, Fulham have their best opportunity to do the double over Tottenham than they’ve had in a long time. Spurs will be missing a host of players:
Pedro Porro and Kevin Danso have both recovered from injury, but Dejan Kulusevski, Wilson Odobert, James Maddison, Rodrigo Bentancur, Mohammed Kudus, Lucas Bergvall, Ben Davies and Destiny Udogie are all out. Cristian Romero is suspended.
For Fulham, it will be good to have the additional reinforcements on the bench for this one. I don’t think Lukic or Jedi start but they would be great for replacing tired legs at the end. Let’s hope Sess plays better this week and whoever plays on the left wing can make the usual impact (since Fulham primarily attack down the left).
Andersen isn't in the squad today. I wonder what the story there is? Also, still no Lukic. Somewhat surprisingly to me, Bobb gets the start over Chukwueze but I'm eager to see what he can do with a start. Over on the Tottenham side, sadly we don't get to see Palhinha playing out of place in a back three. It looks like he's back to DM. Here is the full Fulham lineup:
Leno
Tete, Diop, Bassey, Sessegnon
Berge, Iwobi
Wilson, Smith-Rowe, Bobb
Raul
Subs: Cairney, Castagne, Chukwueze, Cuenca, King, Lecomte, Muniz, Reed, Robinson
Andersen out with a fever. Diop was excellent in his place. Wow, is Iwobi back? He played his heart out. Good Berge showed up. We should have won 5:0, but I’ll happily take the 2:1, just regretting we couldn’t improve our goal difference and jump over Everton to 8th.
I wasn't able to watch the match (and won't be able to watch the replay 😡) but it seemed like Fulham really dominated the game. I have to wonder how much that early goal was just what Fulham needed to take the air out of Spurs. I thought for sure it would be overturned by VAR, but I think they made the right call since Raul's two hands really didn't offer any push. They've certainly gone the other way more than once, so Fulham got a bit lucky even if it was the right call.
Yeah @Daddude7 it does seem like Iwobi is finally back after a little dip following AFCON. He had no business scoring from that angle! It seemed like Vicario had it covered, but he got it exactly where it needed to be to get past the keeper and bounce in off the post.
I was happy to see that Silva made significant changes when it seemed like Tottenham might get back into the game. They were going for it with both Richarlison and Solanki out there, but the subs got control of the game again and saw things out.
From the highlights at least, Bobb seemed to have a pretty good day. That cross he sent in to Raul was very good and only some great defending from Van de Ven kept Fulham from getting another score.
Other than a ten minute stretch we were the better team. I also agree that the subs were made timely and highly influenced the game. Overall it was a great day.
The most unfortunate aspect of all of this was how much the pundits focused on how bad Tottenham were in the first half. It’s never how good Fulham was.
Bobb has a silky touch. He looked so at ease, even when receiving difficult balls. Tete was solid as well and Diop looked like a star. I still can’t figure out how Iwobi side-footed that shot with so much power and without curling it off away from the net. ESR is probably going to have nightmares about his shooting today.
40 points in the bag!
