Fulham at West Brom

Fulham face West Bromwich Albion in another televised match on Tuesday. The match will be on ESPN+ at Noon EDT. Fulham is five points behind second place West Brom with 9 points available for the remainder of the season.

If Fulham loses they will officially be out of the running for automatic promotion. Even if Fulham wins, automatic promotion will still be tough since Brentford is on fire. If Fulham can't get automatic promotion I hope Brentford does, because I do not want to face the Bees for a third time in their current form.

West Brom drew with Fulham back in September when they played at Craven Cottage. They struggled a bit like Fulham coming back from the break, but then they got three strong wins until drawing at Blackburn on Saturday.

Fulham is currently on their second four-game win streak of the season. The last time they won four in a row it was followed immediately by three losses.

 

Scott Parker said that Fulham will be without Cairney and Kamara against West Brom. They are still recovering from unspecified injuries.

 

Going to have a whole bunch of Brentford supporters sick they have to root for us today, but such is the nature w/automatic promotion. WBA is a tough nut to crack as they lead the league in fewest losses with only 6 (Leeds has 9, Fulham and Brentford 11) out of 43 matches. A draw would normally be a good result, but the last nail to leave us as the 3rd or 4th finisher.

 

Fulham has their tickets punched for the playoffs. Highlights from Fulham:


I didn't think it was a terrible showing from Fulham, but it didn't feel very inspired either. A win was needed, but there didn't seem to be a lot of urgency until the last few minutes. Despite having every healthy shooter on the pitch at some point, there were only 6 shots. So much slow tentative play up from the back made it feel like Fulham were playing for a draw. Once the ball got into the midfield, Fulham players held the ball too long and allowed West Brom to block up passing lanes. I was particularly disappointed in Onomah. He didn't seem to want to be playing out there and just became a drag for the midfield today. West Brom is a good team, but so is Brentford and one of them is going to be in the playoffs and Fulham will need to do better.

 

I had completely forgotten about this match until I got an alert saying that it was starting in 15 minutes. I guess it was a good (?) thing that today was my furlough day. I finished making lunch and turned the game on just as they were showing the line ups.

I have a feeling that we saw a bit of a preview of the playoffs today. Too much cautiousness. I suppose that I won't argue with another clean sheet though. As MicahMan said, Onomah was not inspiring and unfortunately Johansen wasn't much of an improvement. I'm also starting to wonder if our cadre of attacking midfielders/wingers are ever on the same page. However, Knockaert's hustle was a bright spot - there were at least a few times where he beat Odoi back on defense.

 

Perhaps it a result of two teams playing cautious and cancelling each other out, or the frantic match schedule catching up with everyone, but the squad(s) sure looked exhausted yesterday. It was all a bit of a cagey bore.

I hope Parker starts to rotate some new players in over the next two matches in prep for the playoffs in 11-12 days time.

That said, when's the last time we recorded four straight clean sheets??

 

March 18 to April 18, 2018 against Norwich, Leeds, Sheffield Wednesday, and Reading

I had the same thought too. The schedule may be having an impact. At least Fulham can focus on recovery if necessary during the next two matches.

 

Fulham has been posting more content to their YouTube channel, which I hope we can encourage by watching stuff like Parker's post WBA match interview (includes a few highlights cut and covers some critiques in the above posts):

 

It's a shame there are no points awarded for time of possession. We're second in the league, behind only Leeds. Can't argue with the recent results, and we're also second in clean sheets, again behind Leeds. But it's painful to watch. Playing the possession game only works if you generate quality scoring chances. I fear we don't do it well enough to succeed in the playoffs. Again, the results of the four straight wins speak for themselves, but we really needed to win this one to have any chance of pipping West Brom for second. Now we have to start figuring out how to navigate the playoffs again. But it's better than not being in them. How do we approach the final two fixtures then? Use them as preps for the playoffs, or go all out to win them? I'd really like to see us pick up the pace from the back, but I'm still iffy if we can do it well enough in one and done playoff scenarios. Gotta have faith, I guess.
Onward to Saturday at the Cottage against Wednesday!