Fulham at Manchester City - FA Cup Fourth Round

Fulham travels to face Manchester City in the FA Cup at 10am EST on Saturday. The match will be available on ESPN+.

Hopefully it isn't too bold to say... here's your future Fulham. The expectation is that next season Fulham will be back to playing Manchester City at least twice a year. With City's substantial lead in the Premier League and over a week before their next Champions League match, Manchester City will have no excuse to not put out a strong lineup. They came in to Swindon with more than enough firepower so we should expect the same against Fulham. I expect a loss, but I want to see how well Fulham matches up against City. If Fulham struggled against Blackpool's high press I shudder to think what might happen against Manchester City - well, we've seen what happens, Ream gets an early red and it gets worse from there. I'll be satisfied if Fulham can stay within a goal or two. I'll be depressed if Fulham gets spanked 7-0 a-la Reading.

 

I promised myself if the score gets out of hand I'll turn the game off. Here's hoping I watch the whole thing.

 

Robinson and DeCordova-Reid will not be available so they can rest after international duty. Tete is still not healthy, so we'll likely see Neco Williams since he is available.

 

Pretty strong starting 11

 

It was a good opening, a decent first half, and then Citeh punished Fulham for its mistakes.

 

The highlights:


After I was done celebrating Fulham's score (and seconds before they conceded) I said to my wife "This is finishing 5-1, but at least Fulham scored once!" Well Fulham did even better than I predicted and kept it to just 4-1. It could have been worse if City had pressed harder in the first half, but my theory is that early goal shocked them a little and they played more defensively in the first half. Our guys up front did well and earned a few chances and really should have had a second when Kebano's shot was parried into the path of Carvalho (and will someone please tell ESPN how to pronounce his name!).

As Barry said City made Fulham pay for their mistakes and I think they got lucky with that penalty. I thought Bryan made a good, necessary, and clean challenge, but it was certainly tight. Bryan was the surprise bright spot for me, given who he was up against I thought he did fairly well on defense and going forward. Williams was hit and miss, but given he had his first run out with the Fulham against the best team in the world I'm willing to give him a break. He gifted City the corner they scored off of and I don't recall him generating much offensively, but he did fairly well defensively. I don't know why Chalobah was left in the whole match. He seemed to be struggling throughout the second half. Maybe Silva has no intention of playing him against Millwall and didn't want to put more on a player likely to start at the Den.

Fulham is one of just four English teams to have scored at the Etihad this season so I'll take that as a positive and move on.

And while you were watching this you may have missed that Blackburn were beaten by 10-man Swansea today to stay 5 points behind Fulham having also played two more matches.

 

I was immensely encouraged by this game, despite the second half. Most of the players who started against ManCity have the quality to play and win in the Prem, and they proved it. If (when?) we go up, we will need greater quality depth, and improvements at starting CB. It does suck that we'll definitely lose Carvalho. Such a rare talent. Here's hoping we have someone similar waiting in the academy for his chance.