View on today

[thebig25]

Don't often post on here (or TIFF- I've posted this there too) But after a very frustrating afternoon I wanted to post some thoughts

1) What was the plan Jol? We were playing against possibly the weakest back 4 in the League and yet we decided to give them the weekend off. We did not have a shot till the 80th minute and seemed content on trying (and failing) to keep possession around the half way line rather than pushing forward and attacking them. Absolutely no sustained pressure until the last few minutes. Also, it's pretty clear that Taarabt is their main man and yet we didn't appear to make any special effort to mark him at all from what I could see. He's a tricky fucker so its a tough job to stop him but its even tougher if he's got a few yards of run up and nobody closes him down.

2) Midfield? more like a back 6 and 2 blokes standing nearer the fans. Absolutely no attacking intent from the midfield, and today at least, not the best defensive work either. I'm sure if they'd opened up the gates on the side of the pitch Baird and Sidwell would have passed it sideways right the way up to the Uxbridge Road and i'm not sure what duff and Richardson were doing. They left the front 2 totally isolated and I can't think of a single through ball being played to either of the strikers. I'm in the minority (maybe of one) that thinks Kasami could be great for us if given a chance and think He might be able to do a job linking defence to attack better than Sidwell and Baird do. I hope that the club have got a creative mid lined up for January.

3) Plan B?  I know its not what we all want to see, but as we've got no creative midfielders available at moment there is no harm in going long occasionally and stretching the game out by playing the ball into areas for our wingers to chase. It keeps their full backs honest and forces them back towards their own box. Worst comes to worst it goes for a throw deep in their end. Stoke have played this way for years, and although it's not pretty it is another way to play. This tika-taka bollocks with no outlet and continual recycling of the ball in front of our own box just invites pressure and turns every loss of possession into an almost immediate scoring chance for them.

4) Selection policy? Richardson looked anemic and had no impact at all, but he's just back from injury so I'm going to instead ask Jol why he picked him to start anyway. Game needed pace and Frei, Kaka or Dejagah would have been better. Also, what does Petric have to do to get a start? I thought him and Dejagah made a difference (for what it was worth) when they came on. Rodallega was awful and although the game was crying out for pace, we needed intelligent running into spaces and getting behind them type pace, not the special brand of headless chicken, Andy Johnson huff and puff type pace Hugo gives out. I heard people today saying he is needed to do Berbatov's running, but as most oppositions will put 2 markers on Dimitar anyway we need players smart enough to react to the extra space and put themselves somewhere he can find them for a chance. I think Petric does that better. Hugo is a late in the game sub at best.

5) Lastly, and this sounds like madness/heresy, I'm not sure why we bought Berbatov. Don't get me wrong it's great he's here and I'm not going to dig him out at all- He's a fantastic player- but he needs a level of quality and understanding in his team mates that in general we just don't have. When we are on it he brings others around him upto his level but watching him today as the rest of his colleagues conspired to fluff their lines he cut a very lonely and frustrated figure. Some may say 'well run about a bit more Dimitar, get involved' but he doesn't do that, and we knew that when we signed him. Maybe we would have better off signing 1-2 slightly lower quality players who fitted better with the other players we already had.  The signing sadly looks like one designed to up our branding and perception (i.e 'look at Fulham signing Berbatov, They are a proper big prem club now'), not a pragmatic signing that moves the team on as a collective footballing entity. Hopefully this branding aspect will pay off in some way as other players who may not have thought about Fulham as an option will now look at us in a different light.

Only positive I can think of today is that this should mean the management and players will be having a long hard look at themselves and hopefully provoke a reaction to push us forward in the new year.

Onwards and upwards.

COYW.

[ChesterTheTabby]

Absolutely excellent post, I agree 100% with everything you said. Especially, as heretical it may seem, the Berbatov bit. He is a wonderful talent, however, the players we have do not share such skill. Berbatov thrives on equally creative and intelligent people, otherwise his flicks, jukes, and technical abilities mean nothing. If anything we need young players like Kaka and Frei, players who may make mistakes but are willing to take risks at running against defenders and overlapping. The inexperience plays to our advantage because it frightens defenders who don't usually deal with that kind of stuff--techniques that Berbatov can utilize.

I truly hope that the team look in the mirror and realize how far they have truly fallen...from a 5-0 hammering of Norwich city...to losing 2-1 to the weakest team in the Prem, giving them their first win in 17  attempts, and our biggest rivals. If things don't change...storm clouds are brewing.

[ffcbulgaria]

Well we signed players of lesser quality as well. For reference see your paragraph on Richardson!

I don't think you would bear a pair of them!

[thebig25]

I said slightly lower quality, not low quality.

Its not that I don't want Berbatov, on the contrary I would love to find a formation that brings the best out of him, but i'm not actually sure that exists with this bunch of players. Ruiz seems to be able to make him click (the Goals per game stat with/without him somebody trotted out recently seems to point to that) but is a bit fragile.

I'm hoping that some of the targets we failed to land in the window are going back into the mix. I know you can make anybody look like a world beater on YouTube but the Belgian fella that we and Everton went for looks like he could be decent Dembele like player that, along with Ruiz would free Berbatov to stop coming back so deep and really hurt people.

[alfie]

Don't often post on here (or TIFF- I've posted this there too) But after a very frustrating afternoon I wanted to post some thoughts

1) What was the plan Jol? We were playing against possibly the weakest back 4 in the League and yet we decided to give them the weekend off. We did not have a shot till the 80th minute and seemed content on trying (and failing) to keep possession around the half way line rather than pushing forward and attacking them. Absolutely no sustained pressure until the last few minutes. Also, it's pretty clear that Taarabt is their main man and yet we didn't appear to make any special effort to mark him at all from what I could see. He's a tricky fucker so its a tough job to stop him but its even tougher if he's got a few yards of run up and nobody closes him down.

2) Midfield? more like a back 6 and 2 blokes standing nearer the fans. Absolutely no attacking intent from the midfield, and today at least, not the best defensive work either. I'm sure if they'd opened up the gates on the side of the pitch Baird and Sidwell would have passed it sideways right the way up to the Uxbridge Road and i'm not sure what duff and Richardson were doing. They left the front 2 totally isolated and I can't think of a single through ball being played to either of the strikers. I'm in the minority (maybe of one) that thinks Kasami could be great for us if given a chance and think He might be able to do a job linking defence to attack better than Sidwell and Baird do. I hope that the club have got a creative mid lined up for January.

3) Plan B?  I know its not what we all want to see, but as we've got no creative midfielders available at moment there is no harm in going long occasionally and stretching the game out by playing the ball into areas for our wingers to chase. It keeps their full backs honest and forces them back towards their own box. Worst comes to worst it goes for a throw deep in their end. Stoke have played this way for years, and although it's not pretty it is another way to play. This tika-taka bollocks with no outlet and continual recycling of the ball in front of our own box just invites pressure and turns every loss of possession into an almost immediate scoring chance for them.

4) Selection policy? Richardson looked anemic and had no impact at all, but he's just back from injury so I'm going to instead ask Jol why he picked him to start anyway. Game needed pace and Frei, Kaka or Dejagah would have been better. Also, what does Petric have to do to get a start? I thought him and Dejagah made a difference (for what it was worth) when they came on. Rodallega was awful and although the game was crying out for pace, we needed intelligent running into spaces and getting behind them type pace, not the special brand of headless chicken, Andy Johnson huff and puff type pace Hugo gives out. I heard people today saying he is needed to do Berbatov's running, but as most oppositions will put 2 markers on Dimitar anyway we need players smart enough to react to the extra space and put themselves somewhere he can find them for a chance. I think Petric does that better. Hugo is a late in the game sub at best.

5) Lastly, and this sounds like madness/heresy, I'm not sure why we bought Berbatov. Don't get me wrong it's great he's here and I'm not going to dig him out at all- He's a fantastic player- but he needs a level of quality and understanding in his team mates that in general we just don't have. When we are on it he brings others around him upto his level but watching him today as the rest of his colleagues conspired to fluff their lines he cut a very lonely and frustrated figure. Some may say 'well run about a bit more Dimitar, get involved' but he doesn't do that, and we knew that when we signed him. Maybe we would have better off signing 1-2 slightly lower quality players who fitted better with the other players we already had.  The signing sadly looks like one designed to up our branding and perception (i.e 'look at Fulham signing Berbatov, They are a proper big prem club now'), not a pragmatic signing that moves the team on as a collective footballing entity. Hopefully this branding aspect will pay off in some way as other players who may not have thought about Fulham as an option will now look at us in a different light.

Only positive I can think of today is that this should mean the management and players will be having a long hard look at themselves and hopefully provoke a reaction to push us forward in the new year.

Onwards and upwards.

COYW.

I have to say that i am not that impressed with Berbatov purely because he knows the limitations of the players around him, yet he still tries to pass or do something fancy and expect these players to know what he is doing. I do find sometimes his work rate is poor, couple of times yesterday the ball came his way and with a little bit of effort he could have intercepted the ball but just seemed to ignore the chance, perhaps he should think about maybe adapting his game to suite them.