Fulham at Hull

Fulham travels to Hull to face the Tigers at 10am EST on Saturday. The match will be available on FFCTV.

On paper this looks like an easy three points for Fulham. Hull has an anemic offense and is one of five teams in the Championship that have fewer goals than Mitrovic has by himself. They are 12 points above relegation, but still 7 points behind their relegation season in 2019-20 when they suffered an epic collapse. Fulham also cruised to an easy 2-0 victory vs Hull in August for their first clean sheet and first home win.

However, we must remember that Hull is much improved since August. After getting just two wins and suffering 11 shutouts in their first 16 matches they have gotten seven wins and just three shutouts in the last 14. Two of their most recent wins came against Blackburn and Bournemouth when those teams were hoping to claim second place and keep pace with Fulham. Hopefully Silva has the team in the right frame of mind and ready to play on Saturday.

Fulham is in an incredible spot right now, one that some of us have never experienced before as fans - they have a commanding lead in the table. They've been in first place for almost a month now and have been in the automatic promotion slots for most of the season. That's fantastic. However, part of the reason that I still do my share of hand-wringing is that it still feels tenuous. Fulham is on pace to earn 96 points - just above the 94 point norm for teams that win the Championship. And if you want to look at automatic promotion from second place, Fulham is well in front of the pace needed for 89 points that will usually, but not always (see 2018), earn a ticket to the Premier League. But then I look at West Brom and how quickly things have fallen apart for them. A string of losses and Fulham could suddenly be looking at the playoffs and after the season they've had so far that would be incredibly disappointing (instead of thrilling like 2018 and 2020).

So while I'd like to sit back and just enjoy throttling the competition I'm still nervous. There is this odd feeling too that the team has been running at 100% in only a few matches and haven't quite been living up to their potential. That sounds ridiculous when you look at 77 goals, but I can't help but feel the team should be doing better, especially defensively - but that still sounds ridiculous with the second best record in goals conceded. Maybe this is residual feelings of doom after some of the difficult seasons in the past, so I'm going to remind myself to enjoy the view Fulham has at the top while they've got it.

 

This one feels a little like a banana peel. Because of our Fulhamishness.

Hope it's a @jumpkutz banana, though.

 

Here are extended highlights from Hull, however they have a pro-Hull slant in what is shown. More on that below...


The first 15 or 20 minutes were totally owned by Fulham. Hull had trouble getting out of their half and Fulham kept getting behind their lines down the wings, but they just couldn't convert anything. This was likely due to the terrible conditions - you can see water ponding in some areas and the Hull goal keeper once had to stop himself from taking a goal kick to retrieve the ball that started to blow away. Fulham just couldn't seem to find the precision needed to generate many good scoring chances. When Fulham couldn't get a goal it started to feel like one of those matches where an early Fulham advantage would come to nothing and a fluky goal might win it for the other team. Fulham's best chance in the first half came when Wilson had the ball on a breakaway and decided to take the shot on his own rather than attempting to square the ball to Carvalho who was unmarked. Hardly anything from that opening period of Fulham pressure makes it into the highlights.

Then Hull started to steady themselves and actually possess the ball for longer than a few seconds. You'll get a couple minutes of that in the highlights, but it would be fair to say that the teams seemed pretty even by the end of the first half.

Just when I started to think a draw wouldn't be the worst thing in a sloppy match like this, Mitrovic finally got a good ball that let him get just enough space for a really beautiful header into the net. The Hull defenders had done a good job (with the notable exception of that one free kick) of gluing themselves to Mitrovic and their defense position wasn't bad on the goal, but it wasn't perfect and Mitro took the opportunity that was given. I look forward to Mitrovic getting 32 goals and the scoring record all his own by the end of the month. After the goal Fulham played much more defensively and still managed some chances on counters, but mostly they were working to protect the lead. Hull had their chances, but the Fulham defense hung tough.

Despite the narrow score line I was more pleased with this performance than the Millwall victory. I thought most of the guys played well. Carvalho look particularly good and Williams is just getting better with each game. My one major complaint is with Chalobah. He seems to lack focus and makes some poor decisions at points. I don't know what Silva sees in him because I'd feel a lot more comfortable with the other midfield options on the squad.

In the other matches, Bournemouth won (after being down 1-0 with ten minutes to go) and QPR lost so Fulham now has a 6 point margin over second place and an 11 point margin over third.

 

Funny how a football performance can exist in the eye of the beholder. I voted for Chalobah as man of the match. I thought he was instrumental in locking down the middle and giving Cairney and Carvalho the freedom to create. Reed and Seri are more talented and can be special on their day--especially Reed---but Chalobah is disciplined and consistent. I think Silva values that.

 

And you are not alone. One of the guys from Fulhamish said the same thing and he was given a pretty good write up from The Hammy End too - and this is from people who were at the game and saw it with their own eyes. Clearly I'm not seeing the things I should be giving him some credit for (I'm not inclined to think everyone else is wrong and I'm right )

 

Chalobah: flashpoint for Fulham discussion!! I think we can all agree, he's no Dickson Etuhu.
COYW!

 

Don't give up @MicahMan. If Copernicus had, we'd still be scared of falling off a side of an ocean.