Fulham Away to Birmingham

It all comes down to this match & scoreboard watching. As mentioned on the ‘Championship’ thread both the Brummies and Cardiff’s opponents Reading aren’t safe yet, so both matches will be tense affairs. Besides the obvious of being promoted, next biggest hope is we avoid injury or red cards.

 

The biggest question is whether or not ESPN+ has picture in picture or if I can log in on two different devices and stream two different matches at the same time.

Not much else to say other than don't mess with it if it ain't broken.

 

I am hoping you can do 2 different streams.

 

For Birmingham or Reading to be relegated, Barnsley and Burton would need to win their matches - both away against 6th place Derby and 7th place Preston respectively. With both Derby and Preston reaching for the last available spot I don't think Birmingham and Reading have much to worry about while not mathematically safe. However, a draw for Birmingham or Reading will ensure safety since Burton has the worst goal differential in the league. That means they'll likely play for a 0-0 draw from the start and if either Birmingham or Reading score first we'll likely see 11 guys set up camp in the box.

If you want to stay positive about Fulham's chances for automatic promotion, skip the rest of this paragraph. Still reading? Sorry to say this, but it will take an absolute miracle for Reading to get a point at Cardiff. For the teams currently in 9th through 24th place (15 in all) only ONE has gotten a point at Cardiff (Sheffield Wednesday). On the other side Reading has only managed to get a win and a draw on the road against the top 13 teams. It is surely possible that Reading will get a point, but it doesn't mean it is likely to happen.

Birmingham has been in relative good form at home recently. They've had three wins and one draw out of the last four at St. Andrew's while allowing only two goals. Granted, they were facing lower tier competition from Hull, Ipswich, and Burton along with a win against struggling Sheffield United.

I've been saying it for weeks (though it hasn't mathematically happened yet) but Fulham is likely to end up in the playoffs. For that reason I'll be happy to get through this match with no injuries and no suspensions.

 

Under the old ESPN3 set up, you could. Fingers crossed we can with ESPN+

 

COYW

 

I'll be anxiously awaiting the pre-match presser from SJ. Targett left the Sunderland affair pretty early with knock, and Cairney probably should have followed him after an early mugging. Cairney's seemed the worse of the two and, despite the good shift put in by Kamara, we're still better with Targett at left back behind Sess. They really clicked from the beginning of Matt's arrival, and that really enhances the abilities of our most talented player. Fingers crossed that both are 100% fit for this one.
As for the odds of Reading getting a result at Cardiff, well, stranger things have happened. I'm not even going to speculate about playoff scenarios until things play out on Sunday. We've got Big Mo, and too many improbable things have already occurred since December 16th.
To quote Louis Jordan's 007 bad guy in Octopussy, "Let the sport commence!"
And the banana is ready to ROCK!

 

Not sure how many of you are on twitter, but you can follow a group of Fulham fans walking the 113 miles from Craven Cottage to St. Andrews for the match Sunday. They left this morning and have raised more than 10,000 pounds for a charity that helps prevent men committing suicide. Pretty impressive effort.

If you are interested, follow Lee Adams who has organized the walk, at @matchwornshirt1 and if you're really inspired you can help here: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/fulham2birminghamwalk

 

Joka says Targett and Cairney are fit.

https://www.football.london/fulham-fc/matt-targett-fit-fulham-injury-14614569

 

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The starting XI for the regular season finale:

Bettinelli
Fredericks, Odoi, Ream, Targett
McDonald, Cairney, Johansen
Piazon, Mitrovic, Sessegnon

Subs: Button, Kalas, Christie, Norwood, de la Torre, Fonte, Kamara

 

Disappointing, of course, but it wasn't going to last forever. Better to lay an egg now than in a win or go home situation. Time to regroup and get ready for 180 plus minutes of war, starting at Pride Park Friday night, where we won a 2-1 nailbiter just 8 weeks ago. I'm sure we'll play better than we did today.

 

If you are a masochist then have at these highlights from Birmingham made even more painful by the gleeful commentary of Birmingham's version of GJ:


The biggest concern for me out of yesterday is Matt Targett. I don't know if he wasn't fully recovered from his Sunderland injury, but he certainly wasn't playing the way we've gotten used to over the past few months. He had trouble making passes and controlling the ball going forward (although Piazon should have buried his perfect cross into the net) and most importantly he just disappeared on the first goal and lost his man on the second.

Kudos to Stockdale for denying Fulham a comeback in the second half. I always wish we had kept him, but I really would have preferred if he didn't picked yesterday to show up with his A-game.

This was the most painful Fulham loss I can remember - worse than anything during the relegation season. I really wanted to Cardiff to just score a goal late to make it not such a Fulhamish end to the regular season, but sadly it didn't happen and we are just left to shake our heads and try to build up some positive energy going into the playoffs.

 

Leave it to our Yank to sum the day up succinctly.

 

I totally disagree with this notion that Fulham bottled it. It's not like they knew the Cardiff result heading into the match. They played very poorly against a bad team who played very well.

Brum was playing a very high tempo, pressing defense that consistently would double the on-ball and then adjacent off-ball players. I didn't think they could keep that up the entire game without eventually tiring and then getting ripped apart (as whats happens most times teams attempt that), but they did. Hats off to them.

Fulham didn't attempt enough cross-field or fast break opportunities to counter this, which resulted in a very disappointing match.

If there is some silver lining, we avoided both Villa and Boro on our side of the bracket. Derby are no slouch, but I prefer Fulham's chances against them than against Tony bleepin' Pulis.

 

@MicahMan, did read that Taggert vomited on the pitch during the match, so let’s hope that he doesn’t give anyone else the flu while fully recovering this week.

Mercifully was up until 2 am at a Cinqo de Mayo party and only saw the scores. Along theme of Timmy, technically we could’ve been promoted, but let’s not forget it’s the one day where everyone is scoreboard watching. Cardiff was well aware of our score every minute. They were more then content to shut up shop.

 

I'm not sure that it was Cardiff that shut up shop. They outshot Reading 15-1.

Fulham looked like they had springs in their shoes. They had trouble controlling the ball and sent as many passes out of bounds or to Birmingham players as they did to teammates. Sess looked every bit like a teenager as he got bossed off of nearly ball that came his way. Targett and Fredericks sent as many crosses into the stands as they kept in play. The entire team was outhustled. It's like there was no sense of urgency - which doesn't work against a team trying to go out with a bang. For a game that physical, I was a bit surprised with the cards handed out (and more than thankful that there were no reds).