Fulham vs. Barnsley

On Saturday Fulham heads to Barnsley for road match #2 out of five in a row. The match kicks off early again on ESPN+ at 7:30am EST.

With Nottingham Forest having an FA Cup conflict, Fulham's home match on March 19 has been postponed. That means Fulham won't appear back at the Cottage until April 9 - a full month away.

When Fulham beat Barnsley back in November it was Fulham's seventh win in a row - their longest win streak of the season. Fulham is now looking for their fifth straight against a team that is near the bottom of the table and was easily handled by Fulham before. Woodrow scored the one goal against Fulham at the Cottage, but he is still unavailable for Barnsley after being out with an injury for months. Barnsley is in their best form of the season right now with three wins out of their last six - and only a 95th minute strike saved Stoke from being Barnsley's fourth win in that stretch on Tuesday. Despite the recent good form, this is still a team that has 10 fewer goals than Mitrovic has on his own so Fulham should come away with another three points.

 

@HatterDon I had seen a couple news posts like this one that said Woodrow was out due to knee surgery (although an intra-team spat sounds much more intriguing than a joint injury!)
https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/spo...c-duo-cauley-woodrow-victor-adeboyejo-3597118

 

Well that clearly wasn't a penalty.

 

Disappointing performance. They took it to us and we didn’t respond. Didn’t think it was a penalty either, but Tosin’s poor decision making on the play rendered it justifiable. And on the balance of play, they deserved it. Wilson’s curler was a rare moment of quality, neutered by his awful miss for what surely would have been the winner.
I don’t understand how we can continue to be so inept at dealing with high line, full pitch pressure.
I don’t know what the answer is, but it’s frustrating to see it recur on a regular basis.
All in all, lucky not to drop three points, unlucky not to get an undeserved three points. We played down to the level of our competition today. That shouldn’t happen, but if it’s inevitable, at least we did it with a huge cushion instead of the next to last match of the season trailing the sixth place team by two points. Coaching staff needs to nip this in the bud right now, before it becomes a trend. Lots of poor player ratings today.

 

Came to say this ^^^

And also that I was uncomfortable with 3 out of our 4 defenders today, both on and off the ball. Ream looked shaky at best (I hope he's okay), Tosin got impatient at passing the ball around, tried to get cute and paid for it, and Jedi's touches were lacking quality especially in the open field where he is at his best. The only defender that I was remotely comfortable with was our loanee, Nico. We were utterly wasteful in possession in front of the back line as well. Once we got past the pressure, it seemed as if we wanted to go for the kill shot immediately and the ball ended up at Barnsley's feet. Ugh, frustrating match to watch.

But, then again, I'm only supposed to be here for the dancing bananas. Hopefully next match! COYW!

 

The highlights:


@jumpkutz and @encorespanish said most of the things I was thinking too! So I'll just add three things. First, I was glad Silva made a change at the half with Seri, but I would have preferred DeCordova-Reid came off rather than Reed later in the match when Cavaleiro came in. I thought BDR was a black hole on the pitch - a place where Fulham opportunities disappeared. He needed to come off way earlier. Second, Mitrovic had a really off day too - especially with his passing. That has been an improved part of his game this season, but today it seemed like most times he touched the ball it ended up being turned over. Finally, I did appreciate Silva yelling in frustration at his players to stop celebrating after the tying goal. There was still work to be done, it wasn't time to burn a couple seconds whooping it up.

 

Despite the bad performance and frustrating result, our magic numbers actually dropped!

Per @CottageAnalytic, the points required to secure promotion went from 17 to 14; and points required to win the title dropped from 26 to 25. Tuesday's match versus WBA should be a good opportunity to lay down a marker before our 2.5 week break.