Fulham v Wigan

Take one look at the upcoming fixture list on the homepage and this one is rrreeeeaaallll important. Home to Wigan, away to Citeh, home to Spam & ManUre, and away to Swansea. On current form there are three matches in that sequence where getting a goose egg wouldn't be surprising.

Years where our club fights out it to stay up I'll take the 'don't care as long as it's not us' approach. Where as seasons like the last two I find myself rooting for certain teams to survive. I've really pulled for Wigan to stay up, not just because it seems like one place where we win away :shock:, but because of Roberto Martinez. His teams are enjoyable to watch, and when given the talent his team the second half of last season was arguably one of the two or three best in the league. Add in his stellar work for ESPN during the World Cup where he would swoop in after the idiotic ramblings of Alexis Lalas and in a few short sentences right the ship and bring genuine insight. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to keep Victor Moses who he developed onto the cusp of being a star (Moses should have stayed at the JJB for one more season). Wigan is sitting in 18th on GD and will be slugging it out to stay up once again. However, this is setting up like a year where it won't matter who finishes in the bottom 3 as long as it's not Fulham. Kind of expecting an ebb and flow match, but 2-1 to the good guys to further relieve some pressure ray:

 

I think Wigan stay up as well. Though not with the help from us this weekend.

 

I just hope we win what is supposed to be a winnable match.

 

I'm really hoping for a victory with the difficult upcoming schedule, but Wigan has to view this as a winnable game and will certainly provide the pressure. I'll go with 1-1

 

Our lineup is a little funky with Richardson at lb and Ruiz at cm and I'm not thrilled with the way we're playing. That said, it's hard to see anything but 3 pts based on recent history with Wigan. 2-1 Fulham.

 

If it wasn't for the chat (great turnout), that would have been brutal. NO energy again. The goal by WIgan looked like a pee wee league game where the entire defense watches. Almost stole all three (barely deserved one) points when Bryan Ruiz beat the keeper, but the Wigan defender with a great saving header off line deep in stoppage.

No cohesion whatsoever, seems like an eternity since we've seen a match where the majority of the side has brought their 'A games'.

 

We did not win what was supposed to be a winnable match. Agree with the lack of energy comments, consider this two points lost instead of one earned.

 

Sigh! I am not sure I can bring myself to watch the second half replay. What happened after I left the chat room?

 

Barry, the short version is we came out with that same malaise that we've demonstrated far too often this season. We once again looked confused and out of sorts. Playing Ruiz in a new position likely didn't help that. There's just no fluidity, no sense of urgency on either end of the pitch, the effort looks poor....it just sucks.

The longer version is that we seemed content to win the possession battle and showed almost no sense of urgency in attack. We'd either take the ball down the wing to the by-line, only to pass back to the fb, back to the cb's and often all the way back to Mark. That or we'd get the ball to the cm's (and a withdrawn Berbatov) 30-40 yds from goal and do the meandering, pointless hortizontal dribbling thing we do so much. I believe that's how Jol wants us to play, to dominate possession, but we lack the creativity in passing, generating crosses and making runs into the box to actually generate many goals from that offense. So our attack usually ended with us giving the ball away cheaply and then hanging on for dear life as Wigan flooded forward on the counter. It didn't help that our fk's and corners were crap either.

When Wigan had the ball, we put no pressure on it and allowed them to sit back and pick a pass. DiSanto made some brilliant runs but lacked the finishing ability in the box for the most part. Richardson made 2 crucial blocks to keep them off the score sheet and Mark had a couple of nice stops. They eventually got the better of us when DiSanto picked up the ball on the wing, beat Riether when he cut it inside and then basically waltzed to the top of the 18 yd box and fired off a cracker to level in the 71st minute. No one from the midfield stepped in to defend it. Duff took an awkward swipe that missed and Ruiz was just watching. Really disappointing goal to concede. From there it looked like Wigan were the more likely to score, but they too gave the ball away cheaply too often and were actually worse on corners than we were.

Jol subbed on Baird for Duff in the 82nd minute, pushing Ruiz out to the right and essentially signalling that we were playing to protect the point. Dejagah came on for Kaca who had been largely ineffective for most of the match in the 87th min. Hugo had come on for Petric earlier (65th min) but the stalled offense doesn't play to his strength and he offered little.

Jol did push Ruiz forward in stoppage time (4 min that actually wound up being 6 somehow) and he came close to stealing a win with a nice strike from inside the box but it was cleared off the line by a Wigan defender. I'm not 100% sold that was going in (it had a bit of a bend on it) but it was the closest we came to scoring after Karagounis's first half goal. By the end of the match, Wigan had outshot us (on & off target), won more corners and were more aggressive....but we won possession. Unfortunately, that translated into a draw. We're lucky Kone was out or we probably would have dropped that match.

I've avoided going into a full blown rant on what's frustrating me with this team b/c it'd be one heck of a long read to spell it all out. Don and I talked about it over beers recently. In short, I think Jol is a square peg to the round hole that is FFC. We lack the quality to play his style. We lost significant players in the summer and we don't seem committed to spending the money to upgrade the talent enough to be able to run his style. And Jol has demonstrated an inability (or unwillingness) to implement another style to fit the talent we do have. Last year, we stunk in the first half. We were one pt better than we are right now at this time. But we had a significantly better team then, so when it clicked we ripped off an impressive string of results. It didn't hurt that Clint went on a blinding hot streak in the 2nd half either. We no longer have a top half side though, but we do have better players than at least 5 clubs out there. We're just not maximizing their strengths and minimizing their weaknesses.

I mentioned in the chat that Jol isn't a good manager, he's a front-runner. Given the talent to play his style, he'll get you good results and attractive football. But we're not that team and as a result I don't think he's a good fit to manage the club. I'd trade for the guy in front of the other dugout today in a heartbeat. That's the type of manager we need. Martinez mixes up his tactics to fit both his team and take advantage of what the opposition are doing. But he also sends his guys out playing hungry. That's the other area of concern for me with Jol. We don't look motivated at all. In addition, we appear poorer fundamentally and don't look like our players are as well conditioned as they've been in recent years. Sadly, those aren't my only concerns.

All that said, I'm still struggling to envision us going down, although I'm growing more and more concerned by the week. Worse though, I'm not enjoying watching Fulham play the majority of the time and that's probably the most disappointing aspect to this season. Expect to see me in the chat more, even on tape delays b/c as Joe said above, it makes it more bearable.

 

The sense of a lack of urgency is something I have found troubling for quite some time now. The squad as a whole lacks any kind step on the neck, cutting edge attitude that some of our former players like Murphy displayed when things started getting sloppy. This is not a 'we should have kept Murphy' rant but this squad needs someone to step on a few pampered attitudes and remind the squad it is about the result and not looking pretty.

I missed the second half but based on the first half my stance that we lack quality and steel in the midfield remains staunchly in place. Fulham's problems remain unresolved from the summer transfer window and until we bring in some suitable, dependable central midfield talent Fulham will continue to struggle. You cannot be weak in the middle of pitch and achieve consistency.

 

I agree, one good-to-really good cm could cure alot of what ails us. If we can link from the midfield, then Ruiz (10) and Berbatov (9) can stay in position and not drift out. Combine that cm with a Diarra or Sidwell who is free to get forward, or have the wingers inverted and making runs into the box, and you solve a good bit of our offensive problems. If you can get a captain in the process, you solve a lot of our problems. Course, then you have to keep that player healthy.

I completely agree that we still need that leader we lost when Murphy left. However, it's hard to "step on a few pampered attitudes" when the manager won't do it. What's worse, Jol defends those players (referring mostly to Berbatov here) while throwing the rest of the team under the bus. I'm concerned the attitude problems are irreversible w/o a change in regime. Or a major house cleaning of players, but we all know full well Fulham aren't spending the kind of money you'd have to spend to do a large scale overhaul. On a budget, that would take a number of windows.

 

So much more eloquently put than my profanity-laden rant I would've stated prior to reading this post. Very, very good, Aggie.

Fulham have not been enjoyable to watch the past couple of months - contrary to what the media may say about the "attractive" football - it's the "$hit on a stick" of which Barcelona accused Liverpool a couple of years back, but much less successful. I'd rather see two banks of four (a la Mr. Hodgson) every single #$$&%^ day of the week.

While cooking breakfast, I didn't join the chat in the second half b/c of my cursed luck of joining late, and nonetheless, Fulham conceded.

 

Good point. My respect for Jol would go up quite a bit if he'd take that approach against a better side just once. Say it's down to injuries, I don't care. If he just ditched this Barcelona free-role 6 man midfield horseshit and resorted to 2 banks of four playing tight, disciplined yet aggressive defense and only looked to score on the counter, I'd at least say he's trying to get the most from what he has and/or is trying something different. I've said before, I can tolerate poor football, what I can't stand is poor effort. We've had too much of both recently.