Fulham vs. Swansea

Fulham hosts Swansea on Wednesday night at the Cottage. Fulham won 2-1 when they faced off in Wales back in November thanks to two first-half goals from Mitrovic. Swansea has a pretty strong away record thanks to 8 draws out of 16 matches, with just three losses on the road. Swansea was also the first team to beat Leeds at home.

Fulham is in a good position for the playoffs, but they will need to find some way of winning consistently over the remaining 12 matches if they have any hope of overcoming the 5 point gap with Leeds for second place. Leeds has a much easier schedule over the last 12 with their opponents averaging 1.25 Points Per Match, while Fulham's opponents average 1.45. I know a 0.2 difference may not sound like much, but that is huge. Leeds has 7 matches remaining against the bottom 8 teams. Fulham has 1 match remaining vs the bottom 8. Leeds also has +8 advantage in goal differential.

After Swansea, Fulham will have a season-defining four game stretch with matches against playoff competitors Preston, Bristol City, Brentford, and finally Leeds. If Fulham loses more than one match over these games leading up to Leeds, the gap will likely be too much to overcome.

A good start would be to get through the match with Swansea without allowing a PK for the fourth game in a row. Then keep a clean sheet, score a couple goals, and pump up that goal differential.

And finally here is a completely useless set of stats that caught my attention. Fulham's best 15 minute segment of the game is the 60th to 75th minute block. Over the course of the season Fulham has only given up 2 goals in that span of game time (giving up 7 goals is typical for the other 15 minute ranges). Meanwhile Swansea has dominated that same range of time and scored 13 goals in those 15 minutes through the season. So if you can only watch 15 minutes of the match I recommend those!

 

Well at least I’ve stopped waking up
in the middle of the night screaming ‘Barnsley?!?’ The brightside from the last several matches is the clubs right behind us have squandered their chances as well (especially Brentford) and somehow we remain in third. The Barnsley shellacking really damaged our GD (now -8 to Leeds, so we have to likely make up 6 pts).

There are guys in the squad that have some experience in putting the ball in the back of the net, but Hell if it seems everyone is waiting for Mitro to bail us out.

Who knows what will happen, but hoping the team rights that Barnsley wrong and they grab the 3 points in front of the home folks.

 

WHAT A FINISH!! Mitro scores the winner in the fourth minute of four minutes of injury time! That just after Joe Bryan's desperation tackle that prevented a one-on-one with Rodak in the box when it seemed like for sure Swansea would get the winner. And that all followed Mitro's saved penalty and another immediate save after that. I'm breathless!

 

Mitro saves the day late in stoppage!! Then again he missed a PK in the 89th that made me swear out loud and think a 0-0 finish was a done deal.

 

This team does like trying to rip your heart out of your chest.

 

RUFKM???

 

This one's a little better. Wow.

 

The announcer says it all: "MITROVIIIIIC!!!! Absolutely Astonishing!"


We should get some extended highlights from Swansea tomorrow because these highlights miss a few other key moments:

• Rodak could have been called for ANOTHER penalty early in the first half when he slid into a Swansea player coming free into the box. The ref held his whistle though
• Odoi could have been called for a penalty in the second half when he did, what looked to me, like a two footed tackle in the box that took out two Swans. Maybe I didn't see it right, but I was shocked that nothing was called
• Given those two non-calls I was shocked when Kebano earned the PK for what looked like a lesser offense
  
• Fulham had a gazillion corners (ok, that's an exaggeration, it was 11) and seemed to keep relentless pressure on Swansea but couldn't produce any scoring. Fulham really dominated the first half and deserved a lead

I was trying to discretely watch this part of the match while in conversation with someone who didn't know about the game. My face involuntarily twisted in disgust when he missed and I was suddenly asked "What's wrong?" I replied "Oh, uh, it was.... uh... it wasn't you. What were you saying?"

 

Swansea posted these extended highlights:


And then some highlights fell off of a truck! I wouldn't normally share this, but I thought you'd all get some joy from hearing Gentleman Jim's call of Mitrovic's goal:

 

I love hearing the contrasting takes on Mitrovic's goal. Classic Gentleman Jim.