Fulham vs. Peterborough United

The Posh visit the friendly confines of Craven Cottage Wednesday evening with the current question of who will be patrolling the touchline for the visitors unanswered. Darren Ferguson resigned yesterday after their 1-nil defeat to Derby County at Pride Park. With one win from their last seventeen outings, Peterborough occupy the middle of the Championship relegation spots between the Rams and bottom dwelling Barnsley. But the most telling stat isn't their position in the table, it's their eye popping minus 38 goal difference, 11 above the the Tykes, 36 ahead of Derby and 15 more than 21st place Reading. The 1-nil victory we pulled out at London Road/Abax on a 74th minute header by Mitro from an excellent cross by Neeskens. Should have won that one more comfortably. Should win this one more comfortably. Anything less constitutes cause for concern. Even in this league, where we all know anything can happen on a given day, it should not happen Wednesday night. One would expect a vigorous, clinical response from the aberration on Saturday, but again, who knows? A bit of a litmus test for this edition of our heroes. Take care of business handily when it's necessary and likely, or spit the bit and cast some doubt on their ability to stay one or two until May 7th at Bramall Lane is over.

 

Peterborough have announced an assistant manager will be in charge when Posh come to Fulham. He's been with them for a while and had led their youth squad previously. Hopefully he's not too inspirational, but it would be hard to do worse. Peterborough have just one win, one draw, and fourteen loses on the road. They haven't won anywhere since December. Former Fulham star Simon Davies has come up from managing their U23 team to step in as assistant manager.

Fulham struggled in the first half of the season against the worst defenses in the league scoring just once in each match against Reading, Bristol, and Peterborough. These teams average giving up almost two goals a match while Fulham averages 2.5 goals, so those earlier results were unexpected. Fortunately in the rematches against Reading and Bristol, Fulham scored seven and six goals respectively. I'm hoping for a similar result, but a comfortable win by any margin will do.

The only Fulham player of note likely to sit out this match is Muniz. The match will be on FFCTV.

 

I hope the home supporters notice Simon and give him a cheer, what a great player he was.

 

Mitrovic breaks the Championship single season scoring record on a penalty of his own making. (I’m looking forward to the highlights because it must have been extremely egregious for the ref to blow the whistle. I know I’m biased but I feel like Mitro gets fouled in the box multiple times per match.) Next up is the record of 42 goals for the second division (set before the league officially became the Championship). He’s got 13 matches left to get 9 more to tie or 10 to set a new mark.

I’m disappointed that they gave up the clean sheet so late. Though I t wasn’t the only late goal on the afternoon - in 6 matches, there were 8 goals scored after the 80th minute.

 

Here are the highlights:


This was a weird match. Fulham seemed to be playing a 4-1-5 formation which, as far as I can tell, was just invented by Silva tonight. Seri sat in front of the defensive line by himself, Reed (yes THAT Reed with the red hair) played forward with the attacking line, while Mitrovic often dropped deep. Combined with Peterborough being very defensive it led to an extremely crowded pitch around the Posh box. There were times when every outfield player was in the Peterborough half beyond the center circle. I was really worried that Fulham was pushing too far up field, but Peterborough could not take advantage until late in the game.

The Posh goalkeeper did a good job to keep things close. It is hard to tell in the highlights, but Reed's shot was on target and was parried over by the keeper. Their keeper had a number of other good saves in the second half as Fulham applied the pressure. The highlights also didn't show a good angle, but Mitrovic did get tagged in the nuts on the penalty. It was a penalty, just not quite the wallop that he made it look like. His shot was one of the better penalties he has taken, so a nice way to get the scoring record to himself.

It wasn't the quite the comfortable win I was hoping for, but they did get the three points. Meanwhile Blackburn lost again so Fulham now has an 11 point lead over second place QPR with a game in hand.

 

Whatever the particulars of the outcome, it was the right one, and I'm happy about it. We got the "W" and the three points, and that's what matters. But...
We are witnesses to a very special season from a 27 year old player in the prime of his career. And he won't turn 28 until September. He's not particularly big, although at 6'2', 198 lbs, some Championship defenders would disagree. He's not fast. He's not quick. He can be hot headed. Sometimes he loses control of his emotions and commits silly fouls and draws unnecessary yellow cards. But he does know how to use both feet to their maximum benefit when dribbling, passing and shooting. He's a textbook, almost mad bull, holdup artist. And he's as good a passer as he a shooter. He just knows how put the bloody ball in the back of the net, if you can get it to him anywhere near the opponent's goal. The best part this season? When he scores, we win...almost every time. There have only been three exceptions to that stat: the inexplicable 4-1 loss at Coventry in November and a couple of draws. That's pretty darn good. We need to kind of stand back and just watch and soak it in more, I think. It's special.