Fulham at Everton - Kickoff of 2023-24 Season

Summer seems to have gone by in a flash and the new season is now upon us. Fulham will start off a consecutive season in the Premier League for the first time in 10 years with a trip to Goodison Park to face Everton. The match will be carried on Peacock with kickoff at 10am EDT.

Fulham have had both a topsy-turvey Summer and an uneventful Summer. Despite rumors of multiple significant exits - Mitrovic, Willian, Tosin - none have materialized as of yet. Meanwhile Fulham have brought in two new signings with Raul and Bassey with the latter doing particularly well in his pre-season appearances. More will happen before the window closes on September 1st that could dramatically reshape the squad, but right now it is pretty much as-you-were.

Injuries are still an issue, with Palhinha and Ream likely to miss the opener, and Cairney a question mark. On the plus side they all seem close to a return and Pereira has already taken the pitch far earlier than I expected after his injury last season.

Fulham will face Everton who only escaped relegation with a 1-0 win against Bournemouth on the last day of the season. Everton hasn't changed much either over the summer, so Fulham will be looking at this as an early chance to pick up points on the road. Fulham earned 15 points on the road against teams that finished in the bottom five last season. This match will be a test to see if Fulham are capable of repeating last year's success.

 

Is it too early to call this a ‘Six Pointer’??

 

I got Peacock renewed and I'm ready for this. I agree that this seems like a winnable match and one that I'll be upset to lose, but one never knows with the first match of the season.

 

Cue it James!!!!

 

Well it took a while, but Fulham finally discovered that a team must shoot in order to score.

 

Lucky! But since we're usually on the unlucky end of these kinds of games, I'll happily take it. Also, nice to see TK got Traore over the line.

 

Yeah, lucky indeed. Lucky that Maupay is such a sub-par striker and lucky that Leno's pantomime of interference fooled the ref. Meanwhile the lack of shots had nothing to due with luck and were instead a lack of quality - although Jimenez was unlucky to not get a goal right before Mitrovic came on. I also found it interesting that Luton was awarded PK under a very similar situation as Tarkowski's elbow - I don't know that either call was wrong, but both could have gone either way.

When Mitrovic came on and almost immediately went down on very slight contact I wondered what game he was playing. I'm still not sure what he was attempting to prove there, but I don't think it was just a matter of a rolled ankle that wasn't as bad as he initially thought.

On the plus side, the goal was a great example of team play from Mitrovic to Pereira to DeCordova-Reid. Fulham had also managed to pull the Everton back line out of shape a few times early in the match, but could never seem to get the ball or shooters into favorable locations to take advantage. I'd like to think that as some of the injured players get back into form that the service will get better. And Leno is still awesome.

Not a day without concerns, but at least now we can put to bed any worries that Fulham would have zero points from the first four matches.

The highlights if you need them:

 

Outplayed in the 1st half and much of the 2nd, but left with a W. I'll take it.

 

Everton fulhamished themselves! We did get outplayed for much of the match but we kept our energy level up, kept plugging away, persevered, and were rewarded. Got a couple of breaks from the ref, even. Wow. We may not have deserved a result based on execution but we sure as hell deserved one on effort and guts. Those passes from Mitro and Pereira were spectacular, especially the latter, that found BDR wide open. I didn’t think Everton deserved to stay up last season, and I believe they’ll be hard pressed to avoid the drop this campaign. But I don’t care about them. We won our opener on the road with a clean sheet and got three points.
I’ll take it. Gladly.
Bring on the Bees. We owe those punks.

 

I also thought Mitro was going to be the bad Mitro after that initial challenge, but he did show commitment for the rest of the match. That he asked for a sub after getting hurt but called it off, to me showed commitment, too. He risked ruining his chances for a potential transfer by doing that. Perhaps I’m naive.

I think that if I had had my skull cracked open, I would try to avoid headers and tackles for the rest of my life. I wonder to what extent fear and any lingering effects of traumatic brain injury hold Raul back.

 

Leno got a fully deserved Man of the Match award with a record 91.7% share of the vote.
https://www.fulhamfc.com/news/2023/august/13/man-of-the-match-result-everton/

 

I need to revise my earlier comments... upon further review I think the ref made the right call on the disallowed goal. Tarkowski's hand is what knocked it out of Leno's hands and that's not allowed. So my apologies for saying Leno pantomimed interference.

 

Foul or no foul, Keane was offside so the goal wouldn't have counted anyway.