Fulham vs. Newcastle

Fulham hosts Newcastle on Saturday with kickoff at 10am on Peacock.

Fulham was terrible against Newcastle last season. Three matches, three losses, and zero goals. They come into this match sitting high in third place, buy that doesn't really reflect how narrow some of their wins were.

Fulham generally played well against West Ham, and none of the guys who got a start against PNE had a breakout performance, so an unchanged lineup is likely. Only Vinicius is out with injury.

Despite Newcastle's flattering point total, I don't think recent trends will change. I expect Fulham to continue to struggle generating quality chances. With Isak possibly out Fulham should keep it close, but I think Newcastle still gets the win.

 

Looking for how we react after a couple gut punches within a week.

 

CUE IT JAMES!!!!!

 

I. Was. Wrong. When I saw Isak made it into the lineup I thought Fulham was finished for sure. Instead they put in the best performance this season. It wasn't perfect, if that Schar shot had gone in this might have felt more like the West Ham game, but it was still a better performance. Fulham was finally making opportunities from all of those drives forward. Check out the stats... Fulham had only 39% possession but out shot Newcastle 22 to 15, and most importantly Fulham had 11 shots on target to Newcastle's 4. Fulham felt a lot more fluid going forward - they kept momentum a lot more frequently than in other matches this season. I also thought Fulham did a good job of winning 50/50 balls and then driving forward. This was a lot of fun to watch!

Tactically Silva did a nice job too. His substitutions were well timed - those dumb yellows in the first half made a halftime substitution a good call despite having the lead. Then Reed and Diop seemed to come in at the right moments rather than too late.

Finally I was thrilled to see Muniz's "tush-push" of the ball was enough to officially get him an assist on Nelson's goal.

 

Bad for my cardiac health, but the boys made me happy today. A bit of a strange game, though, in that I'm having trouble picking the player of the match. I might go with Andersen, even if he didn't get on the score sheet.

 

He did have a really good performance, but I think the part he played in that Newcastle goal might have knocked him down a peg in the voting. As it turned out, he finished second with 23% to Smith Rowe's 33%. Smith Rowe was probably deserving of that since he did score, hit the bar, and create a number of opportunities.