Fulham v Everton

Well it's at The Cottage so there is a chance (Goodison is Fulham's house of horrors). Should be a very entertaining affair, and I'll go with a 2-2 draw. Fellaini is always a concern in the middle of the pitch and when he's on he tends to own it.

 

Berbatov is fit to play! 2-1 Fulham victory.

 

Agree with Mo on this one 2-1 good guys

 

MJ's weekly match preview interview on the Offal. Candid as always

http://www.fulhamfc.com/news/2012/novem ... ager-video

 

Thrilled to hear Berbatov will be in but still not optimistic. We seem to struggle against Everton. Hope they prove me wrong, come on you whites!

 

Very lucky point.

 

Poor performance yet again. At some point it's just who we are as a team. Good in the attacking third, but horrible when under any kind of pressure. We need a new CB pairing and a new central midfielder. That's half our problem, we have nobody to calm the game down and hit some passes around. I lost count at how many times we gave the ball away today. It was almost a constant thing. I'm not sure we can keep picking up points if we have nobody to influence the game in the middle of the park.

Our defense is now really bad. I expect to give up 2 or more goals a game now. I like Reither and am OK with Riise, but Hughes and Hangeland are clearly aging. They lose battles in the air, they are letting guys have all the space they need etc etc. I will throw Schwarzer into this mix too because he's been below average this season with the exception of today where he kept us in the game.

Like I said, we need to figure out the defense and middle of the park in January. Until then we have to beat the teams we should beat and hope we're in the top 10 come the transfer window. Think we can do that, but Jol has some work to do figuring all of these problems out.

 

Dvr failed me today so I didn't see the draw - by all accounts it was a point snatched rather than earned...but as we used to say: a bloop looks the same as a line drive in the scorebook.

Have to agree with Vegas to an extent - the central defense isn't in the form of the Past couple seasons. Jol was supposed to make the first team younger per him - other than kacalanic(please forgive my spelling) and briggs to an extent, who else has received a decent run out? Kasami must have impregnated jols daughter... Or he's not good?.......Oh well, I've had worse to fret about than a top half Fulham side so I'm nonplussed.

 

Feels a lot better to steal a point than to ship two, even if the end result is the same. Everton pretty thoroughly outplayed us, so it was definitely a point stolen.

Everton came out flying with high energy and heavy pressure, and for the first quarter hour or so, owned the football. If you didn't know the venue, you might have thought we were the road team playing at Goodison based on Everton's aggression and our passivity. We did manage a free kick from a well earned foul picked up by Berbatov on a counter though, and that's all we needed. Ruiz connected with a sweet free kick which is something he's shown a knack for this season. While it went down as a Tim Howard own goal, that's a shame and does no justice to the quality of the effort from both players. We were fortunate to be up 1-0 at ht.

Everton's pressure waned a bit in the 2nd half and, while they outscored us 2-1, I thought the half was more evenly played. It still favored them, but not as completely as the first half seemed to. Again, despite the goals.

Jol's tactics really drive me up a wall. The closer I watch us play, the less I think the cm's are as much a liability as we make them out to be. Same with the cb pairing for that matter. The Thames Barrier is most definitely not what it once was, but they are overexposed with the way we play. If that way were "more offensive" as many of our supporters seem to think, I'd say it's a fair trade. But that's not it. We're playing 4-5-1 and whether you want to compare the 4-4-1-1 we played a couple years ago to the 4-2-3-1 we play today, the differences are at best semantic. No, the problem is in our pressure and lines. Everton exploited it to no end, due in large part to having the luxury of a target man as they have in Fellaini. Our cm's don't play high enough to pressure the ball. Yet, at the same time, they don't drop deep enough to cover the back 4. So there's this channel of space between the two lines (the back 4 and the midfield) and that is what is getting us killed. Well, that and set pieces. Osman lived in that space today. Another unfortunate byproduct of playing this way is that Hughes and Hangeland both are getting caught out when attempting to pick off balls played into that space in front of them. Neither is able to get back quick enough when they miss and the only cover is the fullbacks. That's exactly how Everton got their first goal. Hughes anticipated, missed the ball, and Fellaini was left to come in and score before Riether could get to him. To his credit, Riether bailed Hughes out so many times I lost count. Since the cm's aren't stepping up to pressure the ball either, we're giving the passer too much space and time to pick out a good pass into that channel. I get what Jol is trying to do, he wants us to stay between the ball and the goal and contain. As the offense pushes forward, we tighten up and then spring the trap to win the ball. The problem is, the opposition are keying in on this and they stop ramming the ball down our throat. Or in the case of Moyes' Everton today, they never bothered trying to ram it down our throat, instead opting to maintain possession and pick us apart with precision. Under Roy and Hughes, we'd use the 10 (CF, CAM, whatever) to track back and pressure the ball around midfield while sagging the cm's back to protect the back 4. We have Ruiz for that now and to put it nicely, he sucks at it, when he actually bothers to do it at all. I believe he won one ball today.

Which is a nice seque to my other beef watching us play. Bryan Ruiz is soft. Toilet paper aspires to be Bryan. This nonsense that he is holding up under challenges better is just that. If you put pressure on Bryan Ruiz, he folds, period. Today, Everton man marked him right out of their end. Shoot, they marked him right out of midfield when he dropped back further. When left alone or given a cushion, like Southampton and Norwich did, he will absolutely kill you and it's brilliant to behold. There will be times in a match where he is able to find some space to operate, but those moments are usually few and far between. So the common sense approach would say we need to get a cm forward to take the pressure off of him, right?

Which brings us back to the cm's, offensively this time. With Diarra and Baird out there, we very rarely do that. I agree we need a new cm. Ideally, we need one who can control the ball at his feet and dribble his way forward, in addition to pass...ala Dembele. And preferably someone who is a ball winner like Dembele was. That's the best fit for the way Jol wants to play. However, since we don't have anyone who can do that, we at minimum need to get one of our cm's forward, w/o the ball, to help give Ruiz space (since he can't create it on his own most of the time). Ironically, fortunately, and whatever-else-ally we got that when Steve Sidwell of all people came on. And not only did he do that, he actually took it a step further to make a timely back post run and level the match for us. That's odd since Sidwell was garbage as a starter at cm most of the time. It's even more odd, b/c I'd thought prior to this season that playing box to box was a strength of Sidwell's. Which tells me it's probably more down to Jol's tactics.

I don't have any criticism on Fellaini's second goal. Ideally Riether or Hangeland gets over to help him double Sideshow Bob there, but that play was a bit like a hail mary. The ball falls harmlessly to the turf the majority of the time, but every now and then it works and you're found wondering how in the hell did we let them do that to us. So, I can't really fault us coming up short defending a ball delivered some 50 yards out, especially when our cb is outmanned by his mark the way Hughes was. Credit to Jagielka or whoever it was that served it up b/c it was a nice ball in. And of course to Fellaini for controlling it quickly, outmuscling and turning Hughes and putting it in the net.

While he made some key saves, Schwarzer continues to struggle with crosses & coming out for balls in the air and his distribution seems to be getting worse...if that's possible. The announcers even pointed out that Berbatov was giving him an earful on several occasions. I think it's time to give Stockdale a run out but I doubt Jol even considers it.

Kacanicklic got the start at lm today but I can see why Jol is struggling to give him the job fulltime. He did track back this week, but he does very little to actually defend. He's more like a training pylon in our end. Riise wasn't his sharpest either and was in dire need of some defensive support on the flank that just wasn't there. I thought Duff did an admirable job at lb when Riise went off, so hat's off to him. I'd like to see Jol move Duff to the left and start Ashtray on the right. Dejagah wasn't w/o error today, but he provided good to adequate support for Riether and I just get that feeling something might happen everytime he touches the ball in the offensive end. He started the sequence on the gt goal by making a run at the box, laying off to Riether who then put in that brilliant cross that Sidwell slipped home. There seems to be an element of Dempsey to him, imo. We'll see. As for Alex, he's fine against opponents who aren't as strong on the wings for now. This just wasn't a good matchup for him to be out there.

Another thing I've noticed, if you watched the match w/o armbands, would anyone realize that Brede is the captain and not Diarra? The assignment of the armband is probably just trivial, but it seems pretty clear that Diarra is the one directing the troops out there.

MotM....Sascha Riether. Absolutely class signing by Jol.

All in all, we were out-possessed 59-41 and outshot and outchanced at a 3-1 ratio, so I'll gladly take the point. Since I've spent a lot of this ripping Jol, I should give credit in that he's brought in the quality that we are scoring at a record pace for Fulham and are able to get results, even when our chances are minimalized. If he can sort the way we defend, we could really have a special year. Even with the flaws, I'm somewhat amazed at our return on results to this point. We are in 7th place afterall with 15 pts in the bank...well ahead of last year.

 

Yes, Fulham were somewhat fortunate to pull a point out of the fire in the dying moments of the match against Everton. However, I am not overly surprised that when the squad was pressed to score they were able to come up with the needed trump card.

I'll continue with that thought in a moment but I want to first acknowledge what a fine squad Everton is and state that their display of football on Saturday was something to admire. That is what I hope Fulham aspires to become under Marin Jol's guidance.

Speaking of Martin Jol's guidance, I do believe it is time we the fans acknowledge the Fulham we are watching today is not the same Fulham Martin Jol inherited at the beginning of his tenure. That Fulham would have struggled to push forward for the equalizer in the dying moments of the match. On the flipside it is highly unlikely that the old Fulham would have given Everton nearly as much space to play in while throwing themselves forward into the offensive end.

I keep reading that Hughes and Hangeland are getting too old and that we need to replace them because they can no longer function as a pairing. I hope you will pardon me if I snicker just a bit while reading those comments because I will counter with my assumption that Hughes and Hangeland are just as effective as they have ever been but the team in front of them is not designed to support them as it was before. The new Fulham under Jol no longer sit back and absorb pressure while sending only a limited number of attackers forward on the counter. No, the new Fulham under Jol are far more entertaining to watch from and offensive perspective. The wings and outside backs bomb forward with abandon and defensive midfielders press forward at their pleasure.

All of the fore mentioned attacking football makes Fulham a far more frightful foe to the oppositions defense but it is far more threatening to our own defenders as well. It has not been uncommon to see Fulham abandon it's defensive shape to throw men forward into the attack. This is something that would have been unthinkable during Roy's tenure and unlikely during Mark Hughes reign. Both of these men relied on a limited number of attackers to provide a limited number of goals while relying on shielding the defense with a large screen of midfielders in hopes of keeping a clean sheet. Neither Hughes nor Hangeland found themselves having to defend in much open space on a regular basis and I it is my opinion that was always the pairings weakness. A weakness that is now on regular display under Martin Jol's scheme.

A team of Everton's quality is going to press us when the likes of Berbatov, Ruiz and Company try to stretch the field against them and it is Hughes and Hangeland that are going to be left to pick up the pieces. Sometimes that is just not going to make them look good. The man of the match in my opinion was Fellani and I will submit that the discussion of Hughes' age in regard to marking Fellani is irrelevant. I'll let you pick the year. This year, last year or the year before last? It doesn't matter which one you pick because the match-up of Hughes marking Fellani in a one v. one situation goes as advantage Everton. When you compound that with giving Fellani yards of space to work in it becomes a huge advantage to Everton. The pairing of Hughes and Hangeland were not designed to work in defensive scheme where the center back's are left to batten down the hatches while the rest of the squad press forward to score.

While all of this is leading to increasing frustration that Fulham cannot hold onto a lead with the fans it seems a bit unfair to point our fingers at Hangeland and Hughes as the main culprits when it is Jol's scheme that is highlighting a flaw in the pairing that has existed for some time now. The only likely fix to this dilemma is that one or both backs will need to be replaced with someone with a touch more speed who has been groomed to play in Jol's style of football because Jol will not be looking back any time soon.. Until that happens however, I will enjoy Fulham's new found fire power and lament the amount I will spend on antacids this coming spring

 

Ummmm, just for the record if you check the time you will see that Matt and I were posting at just about the same time. Nice write up by the by Matt.

 

I am not convinced by our CB pairing. I realize we will give up more goals with the way we play, but how many times this year have they made mistakes that led to chances or could have done so? Too many too count. Hughes does much better against Fellaini 2 years ago than he did on Saturday. They're both over 30 and it's to be expected that they will drop from their high levels. Even if you think they're still a good pairing, we need to find replacements now so we don't end up with another Murphy situation. I wouldn't mind letting Hangeland go after his contract is up. He's dropped in form and so has Schwarzer and Hughes. It's time for Jol to decrease the age of the squad and that starts at the back.

 

I vote for both (great reading). Managed to see the last 8 minutes of the first half, and the last 12 of the second. Everton was tremendous for the limited action I saw, props to Mark, the post, and the Toffees barely missing the target for keeping it within one goal. Things tend to balance out over the course of a season. Southampton was a fair result, Reading was 2 lost points, and this was 1 point stolen.

It bears repeating that Brede's contract situation is affecting his play. It's human nature, he's being professional and trying to do his job, but it's crept into his play.

Sitting in 7th place, only 2 points out of 4th, a +5 in GD. The glass is half full. Highlights from the Offal

http://www.fulhamfc.com/news/2012/novem ... highlights

 

Great thoughts all around, especially by Justin and Matt. I guess I've never really thought too much about the negative effect of Jol's tactics on our defense, because it's just been exciting to see us be more aggressive in the attack. Although, another weak showing was not exciting to watch, it was exciting to see us snatch away a point rather than see points snatched from us for a change. There was no doubt we were second best and, as per usual, had no answer for Fellaini (although credit is due to him for a great individual performance, as well). Riether was outstanding- besides being our best defender all day, his cross to set up Sidwell's goal was excellent (as was Berbatov's nodding it on). He's been our most consistent defender all year and a great under the radar signing.

Yes, Ruiz is still a bit soft (although I did see a flash or two of aggression from him), but I thought he played pretty well offensively (and I still don't quite understand why a Goalkeeper getting finger tips to a shot makes it an "Own goal", I guess because it bounced off the post first?). Also, was anyone else as annoyed as I was to constantly hear the announcer say "Bryan Rue-eeth"? Yes, that's the Spain Spanish pronunciation, but the guy is Costa Rican. It's just as bad as the lazy "Bryan Rue-Is" that some announcers pull.

Anyway, I've seen better- but on the plus side it was a huge improvement over last year's debacle v. Everton at the Cottage.

~ Steve