Fulham away to Brighton

The second you saw the FA Cup lineup you knew where priority lies, the Wed tilt in Brighton is huge. Fulham does have a game in hand and while a draw wouldn’t be devasting, a loss would be pretty disastrous (the dreaded ‘cut adrift’ line comes into effect).

No reason to think the lads won’t put in a hard working shift, but when you depend on a 1-0 win, it’s difficult. Could easily be a drab nil-nil result, hope to be wrong. COYW

 

Had not seen that Don

 

I think that was USA Network, not TBS, right?

 

The rest of the season starts tomorrow! COYW’s.

 

Pretty terrible. We may have used the whole season's share of luck to get a point out of that. Probably would have been better off sticking with the 3 CBs and the 2 wingbacks, but 20/20, etc, and so forth.

No idea where the goals will come from. I feel for Parker -- I have no idea what I would do in his shoes to get this team, with this personnel, to score AND not let in a bunch at the same time.

 

The highlights from a painful match to watch:


Areola had another great night thank goodness, but Brighton also showed why they are struggling with blowing so many tasty opportunities inside the box. Brighton had a ridiculous number of corners that Areola just kept punching away (Fulham had ZERO corners). Fulham was lucky to get away with a point, but that does nothing to provide any hope for avoiding relegation.

I have no idea why Cavaleiro is still getting the start and so much playing time. If Mitrovic is healthy he needs to get the start instead. Fulham looked so much better in the last 10 minutes after he came on. The whole front three prior to Mitrovic's introduction lacked any kind of chemistry. One player would start a run in behind the Brighton defenders, but the guy with the ball would hold onto it until Brighton had time to recover. There was no timing and it all felt static. Mitrovic came in and suddenly stuff started happening. If Fulham can't capture the counter-attacking spark that they had earlier in the season then Mitrovic is the best option.

One final complaint, why is Fulham continuing to insist on playing up from the back? Aina has his qualities, but playing up from the back is not one of them. Areola should be booting the ball up every time.

On the plus side Fulham gained another point on Newcastle who have been on a nightmarish run. If the teams kept their form from the last 8 matches over the rest of the season, Fulham would end up two points ahead of Newcastle and avoid relegation with a historically low 26 points for a 17th place team. Let's just say that is HIGHLY unlikely, but it is the best I've got right now.

 

I gave blood this afternoon and I found the process more enjoyable then watching this match.

 

Starting to regress now. I think we really miss Robinson on the right, but we shouldn’t be so reliant on one player making such a big difference in performance. And even with Antonee in the lineup we’re still not scoring.
This now makes West Brom a must win, in my opinion. A draw or a loss, in my mind, means we’re going back down...again.