Fulham(h) PL-Match Thread

[Stickman]

Good win that. Games again teams at the bottom aren't always easy even the great Lpool teams found them a struggle. And shite Lpool did certainly have done 

I think we deserve credit for sticking to City when they're hammering everyone in sight....

Let's hope they've peaked too soon 

[aws]

Nice comfortable win.  I 've given up hope that we'll suddenly click  and I think we'll have to claw our way back into form. A game like today is just what we needed.  

[niallers]

Has the "city would have put6 past them" comment been made by the hysterical Fannies yet?

[ZonkoVille77]

Although City would have put 7 past them. 

[Anubis]

Robbo getting the Big Hug at the end there.

[Scrump]

6 minutes ago, Funkasy said:

Firmino has done his best impression of wijnaldum since his move from newcastle, hes been invisible for most of the season. 

I don't think the positional changes have helped Bobby with Salah playing up front. Best false 9 in the world last year. What is his position this year? 

[Hades]

15 minutes ago, stringvest said:

 

Very very good.  But what about the match?

 

It would get in the way of the agenda.

[jonnyp]

Flashes of how it used to be from Firmino and Salah, encouraging.

 

Fabinho getting closer to the pace.

 

Mane, Wij and TAA need some competition.

 

3 points, clean sheet, get in.

 

[A_S]

7 minutes ago, niallers said:

Has the "city would have put6 past them" comment been made by the hysterical Fannies yet?

It's why I'm kind of optimistic. City couldn't be playing  hell of a lot better than they are, while Liverpool certainly could. 

 

They lose today and those extra 1005 goals don't make up the point they're behind. 

 

The key is to be near enough to them once Pep has his meltdown as they are bundled out of the CL by a semi-controversial decision. 

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

Comfortable win after a few sticky spots in the first half. 

 

Firmino is definitely bang out of form and you can make a case for Shaqiri starting a few games, for me. 

 

Robertson was good. Fabinho looks to be getting to grips with the new league by the game. I thought Gomez had a good game too. It's easy to forget that he was only around £3.5m from Charlton. A great signing. 

[TheHowieLama]

1 minute ago, Nelly-Torres said:

Gomez had a good game too. It's easy to forget that he was only around £3.5m from Charlton. A great signing. 

Great player - Sessegnon looked like crap - probably made the wrong decision staying 

[3 Stacks]

Much better attacking performance. Could in part be because Fulham are shite but we were much better at finding the ball through the lines and the football was sharp after that. Shaqiri gives us much needed technique in the final third besides the front three. 

[Trumo]

Routine win. Apart from Sessegnon shooting wide when clean through in the first half, Fulham never gave us any problems defensively.

 

On the disallowed Fulham goal, the player was offside when the ball came in so it was rightly disallowed. I don't know what all the quibbling and the 'controversy' around it was. BT Sport were trying to act like Sky and sensationalise an incident that was a much easier call than the 'first phase second phase' stuff that surrounded Mane's disallowed goal last week. That one was universally considered to be the wrong call.

 

Quick thinking by Alisson, Trent and Salah and boom! We're up the other end and 1-0 ahead. Again, the BT Sport team were looking to claim that Alisson had kicked a moving ball, but they never showed it slowed down or close up to confirm that. Instead it was a Trump-like claiming of something as fact with no shred of evidence.

 

Shaqiri got the goal his display deserved to make it 2-0 with a sweetly struck volley from Robertson's deep cross. Thereafter, we were totally in command and Fulham had completely deflated.

 

I thought the full backs had excellent games. Trent was more involved in an attacking sense in the first half, and Robertson kept his defensive shape much more. In the second, Trent had pushed right up but we made more inroads using Robertson down the left. The Scot has more than earned himself a new contract. He just keeps going. It reminds me of that clip of Emlyn Hughes working tirelessly in the sweat box at Melwood, with a voiceover from Shanks talking about how good the player is. Effort like that allied to good defending and attacking will continue to endear Robertson to the fans.

 

If I had a gripe, it was linked to how long we took to break the deadlock. We can't assume that we will always score an early goal, but we need to play with more tempo. Wijnaldum was steady and efficient in midfield, but in the first half I thought he slowed the tempo too much when he was in possession. Shaqiri was buzzing about and it needed Gini to get on his wavelength and help to up the intensity.

 

On Fulham, they've spent a lot of money and signed a number of players who look good on paper, but they look so disjointed, not knowing when to defend or how to attack. Sessegnon faded out of the game soon after his miss, Mitrovic was isolated, and Schurrle was barely involved. The German is like Podolski in that he regularly delivers for his national team but is very inconsistent at club level. He's frequently touted for moves to bigger clubs but I have the feeling that those in the know at the bigger clubs overlook him for a reason.

 

On the referee. In the first half, he allowed Fulham's goalkeeper Rico to take an age over goal kicks, and on a couple of occasions made him retake the kick because the ball wasn't on the edge of the six yard box. Rico had taken the kick from within the six yard box. As far as I'm aware, a goal kick after the ball has gone out of play can be taken from anywhere inside the six yard box as long as the ball is dead and the receivers are outside the penalty area if/when they receive the ball. Unnecessary delaying from the ref to add to Fulham's early attempts to waste time. Thankfully once we went ahead, that all got nipped in the bud.

 

We are back to the top for a few hours at least as we head into the international break.

[3 Stacks]

Also, if he was at a big club, that Sessegnon kid would be a fullback. I know he's 18-19 and maybe he'll develop, but I don't see the raw talent that would make him a top attacking player. 

[an tha]

1 hour ago, Nelly-Torres said:

Comfortable win after a few sticky spots in the first half. 

 

Firmino is definitely bang out of form and you can make a case for Shaqiri starting a few games, for me. 

 

Robertson was good. Fabinho looks to be getting to grips with the new league by the game. I thought Gomez had a good game too. It's easy to forget that he was only around £3.5m from Charlton. A great signing. 

What makes his emergence all the more better is how he struggled desperately with injuries for so much of his early time with us....a lot of young players would get lost in the shuffle with such a tough start and end going away on loan never to be seen again

[Lee909]

I didn't get up in time to watch. 

Any good? 

 

Read that there's arguments over our first and that Fulham had a good goal rule out seconds before 

[Ronnie Whelan]

Good 3 points. Job done. We are winning with the front 3 not firing at even 60% of what they can.

 

 

[3 Stacks]

The attacking move in the 16th minute gave me the biggest case of blue balls since my prom night. That would've been a beautiful goal. 

[Luckyhillkop]

Has someone made a deal with the devil? How do we keep beating teams when we are far from our best? 

[Bob]

52 minutes ago, Luckyhillkop said:

Has someone made a deal with the devil? How do we keep beating teams when we are far from our best? 

Because not near our best is still miles better than most teams, and rarely does anyone play their best against us because they’re scared and we don’t let them.

 

we’re not blowing teams away now, but it’s clear as day that we’re miles better than most in the league and we’re bloody hard to score goals against. That’s a decent combo.

 

unfortunately the same is true for City, and they score more goals and have much more depth than us.

 

if we’re still this close in January I’ll be pleasantly surprised, and from there who knows what can happen.

[Anubis]

2 hours ago, Lee909 said:

I didn't get up in time to watch. 

Any good? 

 

Read that there's arguments over our first and that Fulham had a good goal rule out seconds before 

Fulham’s goal was offside. They are trying to say Allison kicked a moving ball when we quickly countered, but to me it looked like it had stopped rolling when he kicked it. Just more unwarranted whining about big club bias, when the reality is they’re shit.

[magicrat]

Thought it was a painful watch today. Some silly mistakes that could have cost us a goal and we were the right side of a crucial refereeing decision this weekend which helped .

I thought we might really spark today and blow a shite Fulham team away, sadly not to be but we need a big performance soon .

[Mark M]

1 hour ago, magicrat said:

Thought it was a painful watch today. Some silly mistakes that could have cost us a goal and we were the right side of a crucial refereeing decision this weekend which helped .

I thought we might really spark today and blow a shite Fulham team away, sadly not to be but we need a big performance soon .

Our best start to a premier league season ever. 

[Caramac]

[Trumo]

21 minutes ago, Mark M said:

Our best start to a premier league season ever. 

 

We started 2002/03 with 9 wins and 3 draws from the first 12 games, scoring 24 and conceding 9, keeping 7 clean sheets. From that point on, things began to turn to shite under Houllier. We won only 9 more league games and lost to Chelsea on the final day to miss out on the top 4. In the Champions League, we were shite when losing to Valencia twice and only drawing with Basel twice to finish 3rd in the group. Celtic knocked us out of the UEFA Cup.

 

I'm hoping history does not repeat itself, although it is also true that we have played much stronger sides both domestically and in Europe this time round. We hadn't played either Arsenal (the reigning champions) or Man Utd (who would go on to win the league) in that early unbeaten run, while this time round we've already played Spurs, Chelsea and Arsenal away as well as Man City at home.