Minority Report - Fulham

I am writing this report before I have read the opinions of other posters, so I honestly do not know whether I am in the minority or not. Hold on to your hats. This one contains some strong opinions.

Even though we were leading for most of the first half, it was obvious to me that we were second best out there. I looked through the team and could not find a player who had played above the third tier last year. I compared the team to the team that was promoted and Hourihane, Mawson, Fletcher and Isgrove were not there. How could this team be up to the standard of last year’s team. In spite of the absence of the absent quality, our manager had so little regard for the opposition that he played an open 4-4-2 against Fulham’s 4-3-3. Furthermore, our manager made no plan to counter the dominant presence of Scott Parker, who ran the game from his position at the base of mid-field. At times I was reduced to watching proceeding from between my fingers. We were awful.

We are in a battle for survival, and the soon we realise that fact the better. If your team lacks pace, if your midfield 4 are facing a midfield 5, if the opposition has better individuals than your team then there is no point in playing a pressing game, because if the opposition keep their heads and play through it you simply find that you are chasing an opponent in possession back towards your own goal. We spent the summer building our whole strategy around 4-4-2 and now that we have found that it does not work, we do not have a forward capable of playing up on his own. We do not have the midfield to scrap and cover and who will revel in keeping the opposition at distance. We are playing like we are confident of winning a shoot-out, but we do not. We are simply out gunned.

With all our eggs in the 4-4-2 basket it is hard to know what we can do, even allowing for the fact that we have money to spend in January. What looked so promising just one month ago now looks a foolish misjudgement? I do not know where our next win is coming from.

And goodness knows where we get a team from for Tuesday.

 

We have a few injuries to key players and haven't replaced Fletcher or Isgrove yet so aye we are struggling. It's not possible to play a pressing 4-4-2 successfully with a midfielder like Morsy who lacks basic fitness or two full backs with the positional capabilities of the two current incumbents I'd say a change is needed either in personnel or formation.

To be fair anyone who doesn't think we have been in a relegation fight since day 1 is pretty deluded and we will probably remin in one until the end of the season.

 

Nowt minority about most of that.

 

The team doesn't lack pace.

 

Well if you are advocating 451. I'd rather stay at home.

 

4231. Go back to worrying about the opposition and how to avoid defeat rather than how to hurt them and win.

 

Can't agree there...in fact that is when you need a pressing game...give good players time on the ball and they will dictate the game like Scott Parker did today.

 

And that's what worries me the most

 

Correct. He needed clobbering, preferably without the red card early doors.

 

We played a team struggling in the Championship that has just walked all over us.
That in a sentence is worrying, until you list the players they have, and the fact that upto recently they have been getting the 10's of millions parachute money.
All of you that aren't happy, please state what the **** we're supposed to do. As a newly promoted club.

 

I'm happy just to be at the party I don't expect to be fingering the host in the bedroom under the coats.

 

They are still getting the ****ers.

It galls me all the more as they are nowt but a hobby club.

 

Weird, because normally your reports come a lot later than this...

Itchy fingers?

Ps i think your reports are **** normally.

Mike xx

 

Donald Trump doesn't have that negative outlook ...and he'd go for the hostess rather than the host.

 

We were always going to be in a battle for survival though.

That's not me being negative, it's just the facts of football and financial disparity in this league.

We've had a great start, but most of us didn't really expect it if we're honest.

Problem is, the great start has got too many people reaching too high, and now nowts good enough for them.



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This is interesting from the guru of patience and trusting the club!

2016-17 [12 games]
Home: W 3 D 1 L 2 For 13 Against 9 Away: W 2 D 0 L 4 For 10 Against 11
Points 16 GD +3

2015-16 [12 games]
Home: W 3 D 1 L 2 For 9 Against 5 Away: W 1 D 1 L 4 For 7 Against 13
Points 14 GD -2

At this point last season we were three games into the eight-match losing run. But as can be seen, we have two more points this time around and a better GD by 5. And that in a massively wealthier league. Our ability to get goals in this league has been amply demonstrated – even in defeat. You can make a case that the outcome yesterday would have been quite different with Hourihane, White and perhaps Bree in the side. You could also argue that things might have gone differently without the disastrously freakish third Fulham goal. We need to think very carefully about whether Jamie Clapham is the best option to assist Hecky. We should take our time over that appointment. And I wonder whether Adam Jackson, despite his age might be this year’s Kevin Long. If not, we need to get the real one in January. Our dependence on Hourihane clearly needs addressing. Not easy, I know – but we have money (or Mr Cryne does!) Above all though, I trust Hecky to work out what we need to do next. I don’t expect the current run to be the springboard to the playoffs again this time, but there’s no reason why we can’t survive from here. As for ditching 4-4-2, in my opinion that would be throwing the baby out with the bath water - as well as ditching the entertainment value.

There’s nothing for us on Tuesday, but a point at least should be achievable at Brentford with a tweak in personnel and a bit more concentration. But as for where our next win is coming from, what better incentive than that that should be against Bristol on the 29th?

 

I am getting very frustrated watching my club fail to compete on the field for 90 minutes. You have produced some statistics comparing this year with last, but I ignore statistics as I did last season when we lost 8 matches in a row. I look for signs in our play on the field that indicate to me whether we are improving, or whether we are getting worse. I never called for the sacking of Lee Johnson because I could see that the team was doing the right things, and I am not calling for the sacking of Paul Heckingbottom either. But we are a team that is playing in a league where the players are generally better than ours, and I do not think that playing 4-4-2 is giving us the best chance to win enough games to keep us in the division for another season. We have plenty of cash, and it might well be that if we drop back into League 1 that we can bounce straight back, and it might well be that that is our future as a football club. However, my Minority Reports assume that as fans, we all want to know the best way of competing in this division, and playing 4-4-2 every week, when better quality opposition are playing with 5 in midfield guarantees that we are going to lose that battle, and if we lose that battle, then we play without the ball for long periods.

The midfield press that served us so well last season is not working. Pressing the player with the ball is designed to rush your opponent into a mistake, but better players and better teams rely on their ability on the ball to pass their way around a press, and if they get a player free beyond the press, then that player is in the open and can run half the length of the field unchallenged. Yesterday, as you pointed out, Scott Parker had all the room in the world to sit deep and pick out the players ahead of him. He was not worried that we were trying to press because he knew that with their confidence and movement, there would always be a player to spare when a four man midfield was pressing a five man midfield. We did catch him once in the first half, and he used his strength to get through it. For me, it was deeply frustrating that Scott Parker was allowed to control the game, and that we made no arrangements to prevent it. That we were happy to just watch it happening.

I know that you are wedded to 4-4-2. I know for you that 4-4-2 equates to entertaining football, but yesterday we had only 32% of possession and I do not go to Oakwell to watch the opposition play football. I go to watch us play football. The 4-4-2 system means that we will have to get used to watching our opponents playing around us and whilst I have respect for your views and your principles about how the game ought to be played, I think there is a time for principles and a time for practicality, and in practice, we need to find a way to get a larger percentage of possession or we will be watching lots of entertaining football, which results in lots of goals from teams playing 5 in midfield. The only problem is that those teams will not be playing in red.

 

Problem is, we haven't got enough midfielders, or the right type of midfielders to play with 5 in the middle.


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We didn't pressurise Scott Parker at all and therefore made him look like a world beater.

I don't think we played with any where near the intensity we needed to against better players. It's the cup tie mentality as like it or not the majority of clubs have more money than us and better players.

If the answer to this is to go back to shitting ourselves and trying to avoid defeat rather than try and win I'll be ****ing it off.