Fulham at Newcastle

Fulham is up north at Newcastle on Saturday. Kickoff is at 10am EDT and is back to being on USA Network :[

My first thought is that Fulham has about as much chance winning this one as they did last week against Arsenal. However, Newcastle are right above Fulham in the table and only a point ahead. Their only wins have come against two teams in the relegation zone - Wolverhampton and Forest. Still, they seem to be improving and have figured out how to score with Woltemade while Isak is still trying to find the net at Liverpool. I don't like Fulham's chances, but as usual, they should at least be competitive like we saw last week.

Newcastle played mid-week and will continue to be without Livramento, Hall, and Wissa. Tonali has an illness and is day-to-day. Fulham will be without Andersen, Robinson, and Muniz, while Wilson is probably out and Lukic is in question. Hopefully that means we'll see Chukwueze again after his absence last week. [EDIT: While not listed in the team update, Chukwueze is still out according to the BBC, so nevermind] Could we also see a return to the starting lineup for Tete? Even if Lukic is healthy, I'd really like to see Silva try Iwobi in the midfield along with King and Berge as many other Fulham fans have been asking for. Fulham needs more creativity there and they've got the wingers now to give this a go.

 

Bassey had a really poor game, and I will be surprised is Cuenca doesn't start next Saturday even if he starts on Tuesday. We seemed to play our best for those few minutes with Iwobi in the middle. Marco probably wishes he hadn't changed that.

 

I was trying to avoid seeing anything about the game until I saw the highlights. I was successful, except for seeing one picture of Bruno Guimaraes with his fingers in his ears and I thought "That is the face of a guy who just scored a late winner." And so it was.

Bassey has been so solid it was a surprising disappointment to see him enable Newcastle to score both their goals. It was encouraging that the team put in a relatively good effort with so many injuries, but effort doesn't get points and that is now four losses in a row. Fulham have had some challenging fixtures, but now they absolutely must get a win against Wolverhampton or we are going to start talking about this season in some very dire terms.