Pre-season fixtures

I'll readily admit that I'm no expert in practice matches when it comes to futbol, but what does the assembled mass think of our opponents? I know there's a common axiom in other sports that "you have to play the best to get better," but it doesn't seem to hold true for our club. If I remember correctly, we won all of our pre-season friendlies the season we were relegated. Seriously, though, Cobh Ramblers? Cork City? CD Nacional? I understand Brighton and Palace, they're at least in our league. Discuss.

 

I think it is a fair balance. At some point you just want warm bodies out there to sort things out. We beat Preston today 5-0, but had a 1-1 draw and a 2-1 victory against them last season. At minimum that was encouraging. Brighton was superior to us last season, but it will hopefully be an even match. Palace is in the Premier League (granted, bottom half), and Real Betis has to face Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Atletico twice a year so I don't think they are push-overs either. We aren't playing top-shelf teams, but they aren't all Cobh Ramblers either. I think it is a good mix. I'd say they are good enough for us to learn from them win or lose, not so good they we'd just watch them mop the floor with us. I just wish they'd play an MLS team on the east coast again!

 

I dont think pre-season friendlies are designed to test the squad or "get them ready", they'll have 46 matches to get ready for a promotion playoff- but rather let the coach see how things look against 3/4 opposition.

 

We can't read too much into this, but it is still positive and encouraging that Fulham defeated Tottenham 1-0 in a closed-door friendly. My favorite description of the match came from a Tottenham site:

At that point I checked the dateline of the article to make sure this wasn't describing a friendly from a few years ago because I don't remember the last time our defense was described in such glowing terms!

From the team recap Madl gets recognized for his defensive work and our young guys Humphrys and de la Torre again worked well together to get the winning goal. The only concern from this match is that McCormack was described as receiving treatment so he didn't' make the trip.

http://www.fulhamfc.com/news/2016/july/16/tottenham-hotspur-0-1-fulham

I also enjoyed this picture of Matt Smith apparently choking a Tottenham player on a corner:

 

Yeah, although I realize my glib comments about pre-season not meaning all that much, you can be sure I talked as much shit as possible to all my Spurs fans here and abroad yesterday and might continue to do a little more trolling them today.

I also spent last Sunday Morning playing Fifa 14, with Fulham against the big 4 and feeling nostalgia for the disappointment in Taraabt, Aaron Hughes and others. I had a laugh every time I subbed on Karagounis and pined for the days of the short squat block-headed CDM who would come on and usually tackle the shit out of someone, as though he'd been waiting all week for it.

COYW!

 

3-nil today over the Seagulls. But the story in the offal contained this final line, which I had to do a double take to believe...

"That wrapped up another productive run-out for Slaviša Jokanović’s men, who are still yet to concede a goal this pre-season."

Given our goals against numbers from the past two seasons, that qualifies as a miracle.

 

Match highlights vs. Brighton and Hove (I'm sorry I missed listening to GJ yesterday, I didn't know he'd be commentating):

 

http://www.fulhamfc.com/news/2016/july/24/cauley-woodrow-good-test
A little bit of the match action tucked into this interview with Cauley, including the goal from Betis from the half way line.

 

Was able to watch a good amount of this on a stream from the Betis website. Betis looked on top for most of this game, but again we looked pretty good defensively. The goals we gave up were a worldy from the half-way line and a penalty. The pitch was also terrible in this game, which made it somewhat difficult for either side to get a flow.

 

Based on our pre-season results (3-1-1) is it unreasonable to extrapolate that we'll finish the season 28-9-9 with 93 points? Along with that, can we safely assume that we'll score 92 goals (and not one scored by McCormack) and allow a paltry 28 goals? Those must be realistic predictions because they are based on data, right?