Fulham vs. Aston Villa

The Premier League is back! Fulham will host Aston Villa with kickoff Saturday morning at 10am EDT on Peacock.

After being almost entirely healthy the first few weeks of the season, injuries will finally make an impact on Silva's starting choices. Something about these being international break injuries makes them even more frustrating. The big one is Lukic's shoulder injury that could keep him out for weeks. He's been a regular feature anchoring the midfield. Berge could come on in the same position or Silva could tweak things a little in the midfield. Castagne also suffered a hamstring injury that will keep him out.

Meanwhile Villa will have a number of players available again after suffering injuries, including Mings, Kamara, and Konsa. They'll only be without backup keeper Olsen.

Fulham looked really good against Manchester City before the break and they are undefeated at home this season. Fulham also have six points so far against teams currently in the top half while Aston Villa have zero. You could easily argue Fulham should be favored to win this one. If that should happen, it would put Fulham even on points with Villa and possibly even in a European spot if Newcastle and Brighton draw. However, I think that Fulham will miss Lukic too much and face defeat at home for the first time.

 

My 3rd graders have kickoff at a similar time so I'll be avoiding the score until I can watch.

 

It’s hard for me to get too excited or confident about these matches (perhaps a self-defense mechanism) regardless of recent form. This one seems even more dire given Lukic’s injury.

The bright side is Fulham have been playing entertaining football all season, so I expect a fun, flowing match.

Lineups are in and it’s going to be a straight swap of Berge for Lukic.

 

So, so frustrating. Fulham could have won. Fulham should have won. However, you can't miss a penalty, give up two own goals, and get your best defensive player red carded with 25 minutes left and expect anything other than a loss. For the second week in a row you could say Fulham was the better team, but still zero points from both. I know that technically that first goal was not an own goal, but it did not look on target to me.

Raul needs to take PK's. Periera didn't seem confident as he took the shot. Maybe the worst Fulham penalty since Lookman's. He makes that shot and Fulham probably goes on to win.

I did get to see one of my favorite things in football - a goalkeeper with an assist! Nice job Leno to release Raul and what a finish!

 

Well it was entertaining… though unfortunate for Fulham.

I despise the stutter step penalty takes. So annoying. And it looks so bad when the kicker doesn’t trick the keeper into going the wrong way. I love the penalties where the kicker runs up and smashes the ball at the net. I also love the 5% of the time when the keeper actually guesses right and is able to stop one of those smashed attempts. So yes, in my opinion, Andreas looked like he lacked the confidence to fool the keeper and the confidence to smash the ball into the corner of the net.

But I digress… Andersen’s red pretty much made the match unwinnable. It took a dire situation and made it worse. Then Diop came in and did Diop things. I really wish the attackers were more clinical. This probably isn’t actually the case (I haven’t researched the stats), but I feel like Fulham has to be near the bottom for finishing chances created.

I went into this match without much expectation, and I guess I got a supporting result. The next four matches are winnable however, so hopefully Fulham can run up the point total in November.

 

Those who defend Pereira like to point out that he is near the top in the "Chances Created" stat. He has created 24 chances, which puts him behind only Saka and tied with Cole Palmer and Dwight McNeil. The difference is that Pereira has ZERO assists while the rest of those guys have multiple assists. Even Leno has an assist! So, yes, he's making chances, but Fulham isn't putting them away.

If you look at Fulham's xG, it is 5.5 goals above the 11 that Fulham have scored. Fulham's neighbors in the table, Brentford and Manchester United, are worse at 6 goals above but only Southampton has been more wasteful than those two. If you look at the xG table (points based on match xG) Fulham would be second behind Liverpool. So yes, the stats say Fulham have been wasteful.

Fun thing I noticed while looking at the stats... Fulham has the exact same record through eight matches the past three seasons: 3W, 2D, 3L
As for goals, Fulham has 11 this season, 8 last season, and 13 in 2022. This is the only season from those three where Fulham's GD was not negative (0, -5, and -2) after eight matches.