Fulham vs. Charlton

Fulham has a London derby early on Saturday vs. Charlton. The match starts at 12:30 pm London time, 7:30 am Eastern Time, and too early time everywhere else.

Charlton is just one point behind Fulham after a mid-week loss at home to top-of-the-table Swansea. Charlton started off very strong but has lost three of their past four matches. However, that one win was against Leeds who were in first place at the time. Either team is capable of winning this match.

Fulham has yet to record a victory against a team in the top 10 of the league. If Fulham wants to compete for automatic promotion these are the kinds of matches they need to win.

Fulham goes into this match with the most goals scored so far (tied with Preston at 18)

 

Beat the Addicks!!! - not often I get to use the term "Addick."

COYW!!!

 

Fulham returns to a 4-3-2-1 lineup nearly identical to the one we saw against Wigan with the only change being Arter coming in for Reed (which I'm not entirely happy about)

Bettinelli
Sessegnon, Mawson, Ream, Bryan
Arter, Johansen
Knockaert, Cairney, Cavaleiro
Mitrovic

Subs: Rodak, Odoi, Le Marchand, Reed, Onomah, Reid, Kamara

If you are awake, the game is on ESPN+

 

Please put Odoi in for Sessegnon at the half. Please!!!

 

Got up 15 minutes ago; let the dog out, made coffee, turned on tv (Brighton embarrassed Spurs), open the tablet (still 20+ minutes to kickoff), saw Brad’s post...... freaking early kickoff!! Missed a wild one at The Cottage, with us huffing and puffing to find the winner.. smh

@MicahMan, did tell us it was the 4:30 match ....sigh

 

A very exciting match, though I wish Fulham could have grabbed another.

I know Mitro got a card for aggressively shielding the ball, but I'm surprised that's all he did. I can't imagine the frustration of having one to two defenders wrapping their arms around him or over his shoulders on every cross. I'm pretty sure that Pearce owes Mitro dinner for all the fondling that he got.

I was also glad that Sessegnon was subbed off. I counted numerous passes from him that weren't anywhere close to the intended destination. Everyone has a bad day so I fully expect him back out next time.

 

There were a number of bad things about that match, but a number of good things too.

On the bad side, it seemed the defense had one of their worst matches in a while. Sessegnon seemed off (hopefully just a single bad day for him) and Ream wasn't at his best either. I was really pissed with Mitrovic in the first half trying to earn a penalty rather than going for the shot. Yes, the Charlton defender had grabbed him, but when Mitro got a touch on Johansen's cross he stopped pulling. Mitro had an ideal ball sitting in front of him, but decided instead to flop looking for a penalty. I can't tell you how crazy that kind of play makes me. And he was lucky to have not been called offside on his goal.

On the plus side, Bobby Reid looked really good again. He fully deserved to have gotten a winner. With Mitro, Cavaleiro, and Knockaert available I'm not sure how to work him in, but he deserves more opportunities. Johansen seems to have stepped up his game too. I also appreciated how the team continued to keep fighting despite that discouraging second goal.

It was a big missed opportunity to gain ground on the leaders. Stoke beats Swansea and Millwall beats Leeds?! Fulham is just 3 points from the top, but 1 point sure would have been nice.

 

Highlights via Charlton:

 

There’s just something not quite right about this squad so far this season. Can’t put my finger on it, but the performances just haven’t matched the obvious quality we’ve got. They’re knocking on the door of a long winning streak, I’m just concerned they’ve left too many points on the pitch with these maddening draws that they seem to keep snatching from the jaws of victory. Still wish the defense would improve. A lot. Just as maddening as the ties are many of the goals we’re conceding. My very unsubstantiated impression is that there’s equal blame between the defenders and Marcus. True or not, I’d almost rather see a string of clean sheets than anything else.
I think we’ve got the pieces to succeed, they need to perform better. Saturday at Stoke is an excellent opportunity to start doing just that.

 

I totally agree. Even looking at it statistically things don't seem to line up. Fulham has done well scoring goals with the third most in the league. Although, with our front three it feels like maybe it should be higher, but it feels odd to say 20 goals isn't enough.

Fulham has also done well on goals allowed. Leeds leads the way in that metric with just 7, four teams have given up only 9, and then there is Fulham with just 10 goals conceded. Put this together with the goals scored and only Preston has a better goal differential.

One major issue for me is that Fulham doesn't take advantage of counter attacks enough. Often Fulham seems content with setting up in the midfield and keeping possession. This allows the opposition defense to get organized. So we end up with games where we dominate possession but not shots or goals. That's probably the weirdest part about this, and it feels familiar to some of the time under Jokanovic, Fulham will dominate a game in possession without a corresponding impact on results. I'd rather see us try to catch teams on the back foot more - like what they seem to do with us.

Maybe the defense isn't as good as the goals allowed indicates. Fulham opponents typically only have about 30% possession, but for the better teams in the league that is all they needed to get points. The worst was when Forest had only 23% possession but still won 2-1.

And I'm still scratching my head about what happened in the opening game vs. Barnsley who haven't won a match since.