Fulham at Millwall

Fulham have a Wednesday evening match against 10th place Millwall. Although Millwall are ten points behind Fulham, this is one of the three toughest remaining matches (on paper) due to Millwalls' fairly strong home record. Millwall's biggest loss of the season came back in August at the hands of Fulham when the good guys won 4-0. Millwall may also remember when Fulham last visited the Den and came away with a 3-0 victory on their way to promotion. Millwall was beaten at home by West Brom over the weekend but Millwall has yet to give up back to back home losses this season. Mix all that together with Fulham's push for automatic promotion and you have the ingredients for a cracking good game. Frankly, it may be a good evening if Fulham can just get out with no injuries or red card suspensions!

This article from the BBC outlines how things have tightened in the race for automatic promotion: https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/51434800
The most telling stat is that over the past 8 weeks Leeds has earned 8 points and Fulham has earned 20

 

I’m looking at the rest of the season like CONCACAF qualifiers, win at home and draw on the road and hope that will be enough.

 

If we hadn't become such a bitchin' road team, I would agree 100% But our road form in recent weeks has been better than at home. But I think Barry is right. Getting points here and there on the road and holding serve at home should put us in good position come April, before the season ender away at Wigan on the first Saturday in May.

 

I said after the Blackburn game that four teams would have a shot a second place this week. Well after today's results it is down to two: Fulham or Leeds. Nottingham Forest suffered a shocking loss at home to Charlton. Meanwhile Leeds and Brentford played to a draw leaving Brentford just a point behind Fulham and Leeds just a point ahead. If Fulham wins vs. Millwall they will be in second place. Time to step up and take that spot! (Why do now I feel like the sad trombones will be playing tomorrow?)

EDIT: Sorry @SoCalJoe I didn't see your post over in "Meanwhile..." before posting this!

 

As long as we’re 1st or 2nd after May 2nd, I’ll be happy. Don’t wanna spend all our ammo right now, but let’s enjoy it, too. The cool part of all of this is we’re getting better and better, especially defensively. And there’s still plenty of room for improvement. No reason to think we can’t keep up the results, including tonight.
I’m looking for another “W.”

 

Well that match was as ugly as Millwall’s pitch.

 

What astroevan said.

I'm glad we got a result considering the run of games we're currently in (6 matches in 4 weeks), the field and weather conditions, and an opponent we don't really match up that well against. Lest we forget, our annihilation of them back in August was under a different manager.

It'll be billed as a missed opportunity, which mathematically, sure, it was. But I'm not too stressed about it. There's still 14 matches left, this league is wide open (spots 2-7 are separated by 3 points!!!), and even 1st place WBA at just 6 points clear isn't necessarily a shoe-in for the trophy.

 

I was watching it with one eye while editing at work this afternoon. Tough to tell what we deserved from this one, but I do know this: their goal should not have counted. Not one, but two guys in blue shirts blatantly offside. You don't have to be any kind of lip reader to see what Scott Parker was telling the fourth official on the touchline on the TV broadcast. "That's offside." A point is better than none, but that should have been three. But we're not gonna get two back, so we just gotta hope we're not third or seventh by 1 0r 2 points come the end of the day May 2nd. I got the sense that they outplayed us for much of the first half, but we had the better of it in the second, even though we didn't seem to generate many quality scoring chances. Regardless, a point on the road at this stage of the season is good.
Onward to Saturday at home against Barnsley!

 

I must commend the staff at Millwall for getting same day highlights out:


I agree with everyone here - a point against Millwall at the Den in 2020 isn't bad. Fulham still has all sorts of options for promotion available to them.

 

The egregious offside was at least balanced out with Millwall missing a PK. Watched the last 10 minutes of the first half and decent buildup play was wasted w/Bryan and AK putting crosses in Bobby Zamora territory aka Row Z. Too bad Kebano didn’t steal it at the end, but as Micah mentioned the table is redonkulously tight.