Fulham at Burnley

Fulham is at Burnley on Saturday with kickoff at 12:30 pm EST on NBC.

Turf Moor. A place of dread and doom for Fulham. Its name sounds like a location on the road to Modor where a plucky band of Hobbit friends would be torn to pieces by orcs, and that's pretty much what happens to Fulham there, despite the fact that orcs are stupid and ugly and can't score. Fulham hasn't won at Turf Moor in 29 tries going back to 1951. It would be hard to find a Fulham fan who remembers their last victory there.

Meanwhile Burnley are on a terrible losing streak under Parker (I told Burnley to get a new manager over the summer!) having dropped six in a row. They'll also have a number of injuries and suspensions to deal with, most importantly the absence of Kyle Walker. Streaks always seem to end when teams play Fulham and something here will break - either Fulham's nearly 75 year stretch of ineffectiveness or Burnley's recent losing streak.

Fulham will be thin at left-back with both Sessegnon and Robinson out, so that likely means another appearance for Castagne in that position since he did okay last week. My main concern is how Silva will manage the lineup. He did a terrible job with subs last week and left a clearly spent Raul on for the full 90. Kusi-Asare may be out sick so Silva may not even get the chance to ignore him at Raul's expense. Hopefully Silva has abandoned the Lukic/Berge pairing and will give the Nigerian guys starts before they disappear to Afcon. Fulham absolutely must pick up three points here to avoid serious relegation concerns. I've lost confidence in Silva's ability to manage the team, so what should be an easy win will likely turn into something else.

 

I thought to myself that we usually have trouble at Burnley. I didn't realize it was trouble dating back to 1951. Well now I'm nervous.

 

I might not go as far as to say that, but it's clear that for all his talent and insight, Silva is resistant to change. It's not an easy dilemma since chaos for its own sake also doesn't work, or Postecoglu would still be at Tottenham.

I think Marco needs to change the tactics for this match. (Why not go with three CBs and wingers as wingbacks? We can't keep clean sheets anyway, especially when teams play more directly against us, so our best option might be a Wild West style shootout.) But I suspect we'll see roughly the same approach we did last weekend.

 

I get that the Premier League is already well established and probably isn’t looking to build its fanbase. But oh my lord, this is the absolute worst option for a nationally televised “prime time” matchup (I realize there’s a 3pm match now as well, but the 12:30 time slot was typically the game of the week). Neutrals that just want to tune in to the “best” league in the world are going to be “treated” to the misery of Fulham and Burnley slogging their way to a nil-nil draw. And to make matters worse, Fulham will be wearing their god-awful green kits!

Needless to say (now that I got that off my chest), I’m not excited about this match. Burnley is going to hunker down and Fulham will use the 90 minutes to accumulate 90% pass accuracy with maybe 70% possession and 1 (weak) shot on target.

Man I hope I’m wrong.

PS. Turf Moor has always been my favorite stadium name. Probably because unconsciously I believe everything @MicahMan said about it in his post.

 

In the voice of the Real Slim Shady:
Guess who's back. Jedi's back! Guess who's back. Jedi's back! Jedi's back, Jedi's back, Jedi's back

Not only is he back, but he's getting the start. That has me a little nervous. I thought we'd see him eased in as a sub. Hopefully this start doesn't turn into another setback, but with his appearance Fulham is surprisingly going into this match with possibly the strongest starting XI of the season.

Evan, I was with you, but now I'm pretty excited about this match!

 

HARRY BLOODY WILSON!!!!!

 

And yet again the bulk of the focus for the studio crew is on our opponent.
We’re the Rodney Daingerfield of the bloody league.
A very good performance even though we started parking the bus after Harry’s goal. Hard to do in this league against anybody and it came uncomfortably close to costing us two points. But we finally saw one out so onward to St. James’s Park on Wednesday!

 

It was not boring!

I was shocked and worried to see Jedi start, but he came through really well. Don’t get hurt!

20 points after 16 matches makes me breathe more easily. It should be fun in the cup mid-week with other guys getting a chance in the absence of our Nigerian contingent. And it will be unnerving when the Nigerians are missing until late January, but Marco will have to play King and ESR together, and we may find that this combo propels us up the table. I’d love to see the midfield of Berge, ESR, and King given a chance to gel.

Harry Wilson is showing Liverpool they were wrong to let him go. We’re going to get offers for him in January, and we must resist.

 

That was an entertaining match worthy of the evening slot, even if the names on the marquee were not. I'm very happy with the win, but, BUT, that was pretty darn sloppy from Fulham - especially in the defensive half. Burnley had scored, I think, once from open play in their previous six matches, but then they got two tonight because the Fulham defense, except for Leno, was not at their best. If not for Leno's outstanding goal keeping, this game would have been one more forgettable night at Turf Moor. Silva clearly had Fulham focused on attack, and that looked good, but they needed to remember to play smart D too. Part of the problem was due to Robinson being a little rusty, so I don't think we'll see a repeat performance.

Going forward Fulham looked fantastic! What a night for Wilson! On the first goal I thought he had delivered a terrible corner at first, but then on replay it was clear that was exactly where it was supposed to go. Well done. The second goal was great heads-up play from Robinson, Wilson, and Bassey. Everyone else on the pitch thought there would be a moment to reset, but they were on their toes and got a deserved goal. That third was textbook Harry Wilson - a perfect pass from Chukwueze put Wison right where he wants to be and he did the rest. Wilson, Chukwueze, Smith-Rowe, and Berge all looked really good going forward tonight.

If Bassey had just passed the ball to either Smith-Rowe or Chukwueze on his break away we would have seen a legendary series of play for Fulham. He starts off by doing a perfect tackle in the box, makes some great moves to get in behind the Burnley defense, and then just needs to put the ball in the center of the box for another Fulham goal - so close to something unforgettable!

I'm really hoping for that too. Both have played well in recent weeks and if they can make it work as a midfield trio with Berge we might not feel as much pain from Afcon as we thought.