Fulham at Crawley Town - Carabao Cup

Fulham opens up their Carabao Cup campaign this afternoon at League Two's Crawley Town. ESPN+ is carrying some Carabao Cup matches, but not this one so we are out of luck on live coverage. Crawley has only earned one point in five league matches and their only win this season came against Bristol City Rovers in the Carabao Cup. Fulham will start a number of new signings and younger players, so this will mostly be a good experiment for Silva to see what options he has available.

 

So if I delete this thread can we pretend like this match never happened??

Fulham go down 2-0 to Crawley Town and are out of the Carabao Cup. Fulham supporters looking for a silver lining will say "but this was the reserves!" However, the back line had four first team members (Mbabu, Duffy, Diop, and Bryan), two more in the midfield (Cairney, Chalobah), and former starting keeper Rodak. Yes, only one of those players has started in the Premier League this season, but I still can't see this as anything other than an embarrassment and worrying sign of how thin Fulham are.

 

Utterly embarrassing. I checked the stats at one point and while Fulham had nearly two-thirds possession (64%), they had fewer shots than Crawley and not a single one on target. Crawley on the other hand had put 71% of their shots on target. Crawler’s second goal came as Fulham tried to play out of the back. It was shades of Parkerball all over again.

 

Ouch!

 

Every time my rage grows I just look at the premier league table.

Muniz would have been helpful for this one. Maybe we should have gotten someone before sending him out.

 

Three thoughts that may conflict but also contextualize tonight:

Anytime you lose to someone 80+ places below you its embarrassing. Full stop.

League Two is actually not a pub league but pretty darn professional, and our opponents put out a fairly full strength squad, at home, to a sellout crowd.

Whereas of our squad, only Cairney and Rodak have any formidable minutes dating back to last season. 3/4 of our backline have been here less than a month. 5 other outfield players barely featured in the Championship last year. Two others are essentially debutantes. Lastly, one player was played completely out of position/side of the field because of our injuries. Oh, and our two subs were also debutantes (I had never heard of 90% of our bench). This wasn't our B team; it was more akin to a preseason "XI" whose matches aren't even recorded by the official book keepers; or a pickup team that, although has the pedigree, met in the parking lot before the tournament.

 

Yes this was a patchwork of players who had probably never played together. The U21 squad might have done better.

 

I listened to Gent Jim. You can also see some highlights on the home page. Chalobah slept through the match. Diop, as well. If either of them was hoping for minutes against Arsenal, that's not how one stakes his claim.
https://www.fulhamfc.com/news/2022/august/24/short-highlights--crawley/

 

I don't disagree, but I can understand why Silva made his choices. We have absolutely no depth. If we stay up and mail it in in the league cup next year, I'll be more bothered. Then, there is the FA Cup that we'll join in round 3. By then, whatever happens next week will have happened, and we should have Kebano and Wilson back.

 

Agree with you that we didnt have choice and @HatterDon that cup competitions should be taken more seriously by mostly every club write large (Brighton, a midtable EPL side, put out their kids yet won 2-0). But I also dont disparage folks that question their purpose when these cup competitions are supposed to be different from league play/format but equally underline the disparities of modern football (larger sides essentially play their reserves until the quarterfinals or semis, when the glimmer of silverware becomes evident and then play their regular XI). Until Liverpool won the league cup last season, Man City had won 5/6 previous finals. For the FA Cup, Chelsea has made 3 straight and also 5/6 previous finals.