ManU v. Fulham

Hooray it's back! Here were my thoughts on the match:

The quality that Moussa displayed today was the recurring theme of the match for me. No player for either side made a bigger impression on this match than Moussa. I was quite impressed with Kagawa's speed of play, ball movement and the way he seemed to kick United into a higher gear at will but let's be honest and say that Fulham had it's hands full all over the pitch. Joining Kagawa in the mischief making today were Van Persie at the point and the tandem of Valencia and Rafael on the right. All of the above were constant worries for Fulham's defenders and even Ashley Young on the left was an occasional thorn in Fulham's side but to keep Fulham penned in all United really had to do in the first half was close down Dembele. Yet it seemed like every time he touched the ball he took Fulham forward into United's half and put the team into some kind of threatening position. Then when the rest of the squad settled into the match for the second half Moussa became a real terror. He stood head and shoulders above the rest of the Fulham squad and it was a continual point of conversation in the FOF chat room.

One thing Kagawa's play truly highlighted for me today was that Bryan Ruiz is still playing the game one step too slowly. I stated last week that at times it looks like he is on cruise control a little too often and that his game could use some urgency. When I watched Kagawa flit around the field and one touch the ball on to teammates moving the ball around the pitch and keeping the Fulham defense off balance I saw what Bryan Ruiz is so close to becoming. I am certain he sees the right plays I just don't know if the game still has not slowed down for him yet or if it has and he just sees things a fraction late. Time after time he seems to hold the ball a heartbeat too long but I am convinced when he turns the corner like Dembele has he will be the same kind of menace with a greater scoring threat.

The best of our rest.

I thought Kacaniklic handled himself well again today. He was not a constant menace and it was hard to tell from my feed what kind of defensive shift he put in but he didn't make any major mistakes that I caught and made a couple of runs to the byline beating United defenders and getting in crosses that were worrisome to say the least. I am also going to bat for Matty Briggs. I am not going to try and convince you in anyway that he had an outstanding match but he certainly did not shame himself against Valencia who I would argue is one of the better right wings in the Prem. He allowed some dangerous crosses that perhaps Riise might have cut out but his overall play for being a last minute replacement at Old Trafford was more of a thumbs up than a thumbs down for me. I also thought Duff and Riether held their own against Young and Evra.

Who am I calling out

Other than Ruiz for holding on to the ball a bit to long again nobody really because I believe it was the quality of United's play for a twenty minute stretch in the match that did Fulham in rather than Fulham's lack of quality. I could complain that Hangeland wasn't tight enough to Van Persie when he scored the first but let's call that goal out for it's brilliance and give Van Persie the credit he deserves. If Van Persie takes that ball down for another touch Hangeland is close enough to close him down but Van Persie didn't and that was that. I do have a few questions about Schwarzer's play on the second two goals but I have looked at them multiple times and I am still not sure if he had a clear view of the first shot that rebounded to Kagawa or if he could of gotten to Rafael's header. I kind of think he should have gotten to the header but I will need someone who knows more about keeping to chime in on that goal. Diarra was a bit of a missing man in the first half but acquitted himself well in the second.

The Substitutes

Our play picked up when Sidwell came on but I think that may have had more to do with Kagawa leaving the pitch than Sidwell joining it. I have no particular complaints with Sidwell's play but I believe Sir Alex changed the match in our favor more than Martin Jol did at this juncture. Hugo coming on for Petric seemed to have no impact to me a Mladen had been stranded most of the match and Hugo never saw much of the ball either and unless the Baird for Diarra substitution was because Diarra had a minor niggle of some kind I don't get that substitution at all. Diarra wasn't carrying the match but he had been spraying the ball about nicely during the second half in keeping possession and getting Fulham into United's defensive half. Jol gets a thumbs down on his tactical moves today from me but in his defense the bench did look a bit in thin for any kind of comeback attempt at Old Trafford to begin with. Had be been looking to hold a lead it would have been a much better looking bench.

Overall

I am going to qualify this by saying that I have read my own statements but I felt really good about Fulham's performance today. They went on the road to Old Trafford and played United on their home pitch like it was our home match. Were Fulham outplayed during the first half today? Absolutely. Did Fulham outplay United in the second half today? Absolutely. No bus parking. No worrying about goal differential at the end of the year and no conceding the match once we went down by two goals. There are way too may positives to take from this match going forward to fret over not getting a point at Old Trafford today.

Moussa Dembele gets the man of the match performance and Fulham gets 3 out 5 Banana for their performance today on the road.

 

I appreciated Don's view again, since I was too frustrated by the last 15 minutes of the first half to watch the second half. Had I been watching it live, I probably would've stuck with it- but it was on DVR- so I just hit the fast forward button. After looking at the final score on my phone, I decided to see our second goal (which was an own goal, but I'm not sure that De Gea gets the ball even if Vidic doesn't get in his way and Petric and Sidwell had it covered) and did catch an excellent shot by Dembele. I guess those last few minutes of the first half put in my mind memories of years of frustration at Old Trafford and also the 5-0 thumping last year at the Cottage. Had De Gea not stopped Petric's shot and Ruiz not sent the rebound way over the bar, I might've stuck with it- but between that, and Man U's two goals in the span of a few minutes (Kagawa's tap-in was frustrating, Ralphael's shot was well-taken and Young's cross was nice, but two scores in such a short span was pretty frustrating). I guess I missed a pretty good second half display as a result and we might've been able to steal a point. To recycle points everybody has already made, but that I agree with-
Van Persie's goal was absolutely brilliant, it's rare that I can watch an opponent's goal more than once- but there was nothing Schwarzer could've done about a strike like that.
- Dembele was unbelievable on the ball in the first half. It'll be sad to see him go if he does, but if his fee is 12.5 million +, I can live with it. Since we're going to get undercut on the fee for Dempsey (his age and the situation mean we may take less than he's actually worth), I hope we won't accept anything less than Dembele's worth.
- Ruiz could've been better, but his creative free kick set up Duff's calm, confident finish. So I'll credit him for that and also note that, at least in the first half, a lot of the service in the final third wasn't great. Dembele was great on the ball and made good passes, but we had trouble around the box.
- Parts of the match were discouraging, but the second half was apparently better, so I think we can take heart from that and should expect a win over Sheffield on Tuesday and 3 points against West Ham.

I'm glad the site is back, I was trying to post all day yesterday.

~ Steve

 

I have but a question and observation each to add to all the incisive post-match analysis:

1) Bryan: Does anyone else believe he may have gained upper body strength in the off-season? From viewing yesterday's MOTD highlights and last week's match streaming on foxsoccer.tv, he looks to have added 1/2st by working in the weight-room at Motspur Park, much as Marcello (Rodders) Trotta did last summer. I concur in previous views that he still lingers a fraction too long, but perhaps that is because he is not as quickly dispossessed.

2) Dembélé: As fulsome as our Tony was in praise, Alan Hansen was even more so on MOTD. It was right and just praise but we were on first and now the critique of close followers is shared by the man on the Clapham omnibus. I expect tomorrow's back pages will be filled with rumours of his departure to an English top 4 or CL side. The wife commented after the match that Dembélé always seems on the precipice of greatness; I fear yesterday may have been the pinnacle of his ascent in a Fulham shirt. I hope I am wrong, but I do not now expect to see him in person again at Upton Park when Saturday comes.

 

I concur that it looks as if Ruiz has spent time in the weight room over the summer.

 

I agree with a fair amount of what's been said. Adding and/or countering to the discussion:

Kacanicklic. Going forward I thought he was fine. He wasn't getting overlapping runs from Briggs on the few occassions we marauded into their end, so he was maintaining width for most of the 1st half and got a few crosses in. Defensively, he wasn't on my screen enough for the assault that Briggs was under. Given how far advanced he was when we did manage a counter, I suspect he was sandbagging a bit. I think defense may be a liability with him but will need to see him more to say for sure.

Briggs. He was always going to be on the wrong end of the matchup. He's a young lb who has played very little first team football and he was tasked with marking a world class winger. I thought he held his own very well early but then started leaving too much of a cushion. In the first half, he didn't appear to get a lot of support and we were inviting pressure, so there was likely little more he could do. He did appear to get caught ball watching a few times though. He looked alot better in the 2nd half and I suspect that came down to the fact that we started taking the fight to Utd and he had Duff as support after Sidders came on for Kaca more than anything. At that point he started getting forward more and providing add'l width, so that was good.

Ruiz. When put under pressure, he shrinks from it imo. If the fb's don't provide overlapping runs for the wide mids to provide support for Petric, then he or the cm's need to make the runs into the box and that didn't happen enough. More often he was drifting back to the cm's for the ball instead of looking for holes to exploit in the back 4 (thus leaving us w/o a #10). I've said from the start that I think he's more of a facilitator than a scoring threat or even a dual threat. The accuracy of that seems to stem from how much pressure he's put under, so maybe Barry has it right that he's either seeing it a little too slow or the game is still a little too fast. I agree he should be fine in time, I was just hoping to see greater strides made at this point and I question how much of a scorer's instinct he really has. He's definitely got the passing vision. I also agree that he looks like he's bulked up and isn't quite as easy to knock off the ball. Or at least knock down.

As for the match, I'd give us a 2 out of 5. After the first 5 minutes of the 1st half, we put Utd under almost zero defensive pressure. We completely invited a better side to attack us. That won't get us many points. Meanwhile Utd swarmed us whenever we had the ball in midfield and our offense sputtered as a result. We didn't really show a lot of fightback until Utd had backed off with the defensive pressure (likely gassed a bit at that point) and Kagawa came off. Once we were able to win the ball in the midfield and then start our attack under less pressure we looked much better. From Jol's comments, that wasn't the gameplan. So the leadership on the pitch fell down a bit there it would seem.

In most Prem matches, the home side come out with their tails up and the road side attempt to withstand it or absorb it. Against the better teams in the league they can pressure you on both ends very well. Other sides, it may just be on one end of the pitch. The positive side of that is that against Norwich we were Utd. The downside is that we didn't handle that very well when it was done to us and went into the half down 3-1 with 30-70 possession. But it was Utd at OT.

It's hard to take away too much from the first two matches as the first was likely one of our 3 easiest (if not the easiest) home match and the second is probably one of our top 3 most difficult away matches. We're probably somewhere in the middle of what we've seen. I'm still concerned about our ability to get points, much less wins from the road with any consistancy and I'm still concerned we may be a little light in the scoring dept.

I think we'll be fine against Wednesday, but since I've followed Fulham, WestHam away has been anything but good to us. Hopefully a year down in the Championship has broken that trend.

I'll be glad when the window is closed and we have a better idea of what we've got going forward.

 

@ Matt - I agree with you that Ruiz is more of a facilitator than a goal scorer in that I believe he thinks pass first and shot second but I am curious what you think his average goal tally might look like once he settles in? Personally, I could see him around 7-10 goals and 15-20 assists per year if things click for him. I think when things finally set in for him he is going to be more directly involved in the offense than Danny Murphy had been.

 

Tough call. I'm certain he'll evolve a bit, but I'm not sure in what direction. To me he's more John Stockton than Steve Nash. More often than not he makes the pass and steps back as opposed to making the pass and then making a run to play off of that pass. As such, 4-6 goals seems about right and 12-15 assists sounds possible. If we keep using him for delivery of short set pcs that will help his assists. But it will also depend on how well we can finish our chances.

Murphy didn't pile up big assist totals b/c, more often than not, the pass by our "qb" isn't the final pass. For example, Ruiz plays a nice ball over a defender or into space for Kaca or Duff who cut it back to Petric who bangs it home. You see that a bit more in our setup under Jol and while Ruiz absolutely would have created that chance, he wouldn't get an assist.

I like the kid and think he'll be a good player for Fulham. I'm just not sold on him playing in the hole. I think someone else would be better there and he should take a Dempsey type role of wide mid with the freedom to float. Kinda like how Jol used him after Sidders came on against Utd. You can't really pull the strings for the offense inside the box. Not unless he starts being more Steve Nash than John Stockton.

He played some nice stuff with Dempsey last year and for us a couple of times against Norwich, so it's in him. But it seems to only come out when the defense isn't putting him under pressure or being physical with him. You don't get too many days like that in the Prem.

 

Thanks again for the write-up Don and Barry. I, like Steve, fast forwarded the 2nd half. after the write-ups, wish I would have had the patience to watch it all. I think it's gonna take me a few matches to remember who I'm yelling at through the TV, but it's coming along. I agree that while a point would have been great, this match showed that this fulham side should easily push for a top 8 finish, if healthy. Excited to keep moving forward.