Fulham away to Crystal Palace

We travel to Selhurst and Woy’s Boys. The clubs have identical records and would expect this one to be a tight affair. Saw some people saying Willian looked off, I would expect him not to be match sharp, but he was instrumental in the goal, and think he’ll
contribute. Does Vini start?

 

I think Vini and Iwobi start. Iwobi brought a much needed shot in the arm to our mostly tepid shift last time out. He was the livliest player on the pitch and showed some skill.
Palace without Wilifried Zaha will be weird, but time moves on.

 

One piece of good news coming out of Crystal Palace is that Roy Hodgson has recovered from his illness last week and will be back managing again.

Fulham will have Robinson back, but Lukic, Tosin, and Traore are still out with injury. The big question for Fulham will still be who can score. Fulham has just five goals over five matches from five different players in five different positions - maybe today it will be Robinson or Tete's turn?

The match will be on Peacock with kickoff at 10am EDT.

 

A draw was probably a fair result, but oh I thought for sure Raul was going to get his first goal for Fulham when DeCordova-Reid fed it to him in the second half. Instead he decided to feed Pereira who wasn't forward enough. Sigh.

I appreciated the long ball efforts from Diop, but he is no Joachim Andersen. Fulham did make more quality shots in this match than just about any other so far this season but everything was just too close to Johnstone. Although there were no goals it was an improved offensive effort from Fulham.

The highlights:

 

It's crazy how even the match was stat-wise. For example, Palace had 5 more accurate passes than Fulham (388 to 383). So a resulting draw is very unsurprising. Grabbing a point away is not a bad result for Fulham.

I do think they were a bit more direct at times which generated some of the better chances. The finishing touch however, has left me wanting.

I also noticed the big diagonals from both Ream and Diop. Neither of them were entirely accurate, but it did add an additional element for Palace to consider defensively.

Side question: does Fulham have a reputation as a dirty team? Some of the yellows that the players have been given this year have me questioning whether the refs sort of expect Fulham to commit yellow card offenses on a regular basis. Ream's yellow yesterday was utterly ridiculous. Was it a foul? Yes. Was it an egregious foul or an accumulation of fouls? Absolutely not. Even though I recognize my own bias, I just don't get it sometimes.