Worst team selection by any FFC manager

[Bassey the warrior]

Tankovic had a good 45 I thought. We seemed to create more with him on the pitch, Tank and Holtby breaking from deep and turning the defenders.

Bent seemed to do the opposite.

Thank you very much for a crucial, crucial goal Darren..  But after largely lifeless performances against Southampton and again today, I would very much like to never be forced to watch you 'play' in a Fulham shirt again.

---

Great fighting performance, slither of hope still alive.

I'm not sure, I think Tank showed that he isn't a striker as he's not good in the air (well he isn't the tallest) and didn't make runs off the ball. His link up play was good though and he showed great creativity at times. He's out of contract soon, I hope that he will commit now he knows he's part of the first team.

We have to hope Mitroglou is fit soon because we don't really have anyone else, Dembele should maybe leapfrog Bent and Rodallega.

[Humbled]

Tankovic had a good 45 I thought. We seemed to create more with him on the pitch, Tank and Holtby breaking from deep and turning the defenders.

Bent seemed to do the opposite.

Thank you very much for a crucial, crucial goal Darren..  But after largely lifeless performances against Southampton and again today, I would very much like to never be forced to watch you 'play' in a Fulham shirt again.

---

Great fighting performance, slither of hope still alive.

Tank created nothing..... he was another man on the pitch. Richardson was the main "creator" if there was one in the 1st half.
Holbty did little but not to fault of his own, it was the tactics. When he had the chance to do summit he pulled out a great pass to Sidwell.
"nd half Bent come on, the right sub i felt. meant we could stretch the defence with a counter attack BUT Holtby for whatever reason became the man pushed up top and Bent often dropped into a defensive midfield position.

due to todays tactics you cant really judge our "attacking" players but like Holtby in the 1st half Bent turned up and did what he had to do.

[ron]

 :plus one:

Tankovic had a good 45 I thought. We seemed to create more with him on the pitch, Tank and Holtby breaking from deep and turning the defenders.

Bent seemed to do the opposite.

Thank you very much for a crucial, crucial goal Darren..  But after largely lifeless performances against Southampton and again today, I would very much like to never be forced to watch you 'play' in a Fulham shirt again.

---

Great fighting performance, slither of hope still alive.

:plus one: Seems bad to give Bent the thumbs down after rescuing a point, but what you say is absolutely true..(in my opinion of course !).

[Humbled]

:plus one:

Tankovic had a good 45 I thought. We seemed to create more with him on the pitch, Tank and Holtby breaking from deep and turning the defenders.

Bent seemed to do the opposite.

Thank you very much for a crucial, crucial goal Darren..  But after largely lifeless performances against Southampton and again today, I would very much like to never be forced to watch you 'play' in a Fulham shirt again.

---

Great fighting performance, slither of hope still alive.

:plus one: Seems bad to give Bent the thumbs down after rescuing a point, but what you say is absolutely true..(in my opinion of course !).

im not sure how u have come to this judgement....
Bent did more in that he scored, tracked back and at 1 point made a headed clearance as (i think) Van Persie was going to pounce.

as i said when he come on, it gives certain people a chance to blame someone. madness

[Jem]

Please can we make this a sticky thread as a reminder to all the knee-jerkers to try getting behind the team rather than criticising?

Don't write the game off before it has even started.

Well done, Fulham.  You made us proud today.  If we do end up going down, at least we'll go down fighting.

Please can we make this a sticky thread as a reminder to all the knee-jerkers to try getting behind the team rather than criticising?

Don't write the game off before it has even started.

Well done, Fulham.  You made us proud today.  If we do end up going down, at least we'll go down fighting.

I hate emoticons but for the first time, and probably the last,  :plus one:

[Max Headroom]

I was absolutely dreading the game and was counting down the minutes from minute 5!!!!

Fighting performance and great that we did it with some youngsters.

Bent is there to score goals. Nothing more and he did.

A shame about the Richardson miss, but he had a good game.

I don't understand why we let teams cross at will. It's asking for trouble. But great result. I'd have settled for that at the start....

[Max Headroom]

Please can we make this a sticky thread as a reminder to all the knee-jerkers to try getting behind the team rather than criticising?

Don't write the game off before it has even started.

Well done, Fulham.  You made us proud today.  If we do end up going down, at least we'll go down fighting.

I hate emoticons but for the first time,

Please can we make this a sticky thread as a reminder to all the knee-jerkers to try getting behind the team rather than criticising?

Don't write the game off before it has even started.

Well done, Fulham.  You made us proud today.  If we do end up going down, at least we'll go down fighting.

I hate emoticons but for the first time, and probably the last,  :plus one:

I want meulensteen to stay even if it means we go down. I think he is good news. He will grow with experience and we will have a really good team eventually. We were so bad for the whole of 2013, it was always going yo take a while to get going again. Hopefully today is the start.

[ron]

Regarding the post about Darren Bent.......

I think the point here is that he represents the past. 30 years old as a striker suggests that he has a great future behind him, so to speak, and if there is to be change at Fulham, (and there really does fairly quickly), then we have to accept that younger, quicker players offer greater depth by their workrates.

Fulham has always been a kindly club for players like him (Even Alf Garnett said that Fulham will suit Bobby Moore ..."because they play a more elderly game over there....")

And that will have to change.  

[Barrett487]

I think it's fair to say that every player in the squad has skill. How you tactically use each player's strengths is the skill of the manager. Choose a strategy and pick a team to fulfill the prophecy, then instill the motivation and belief....... simples! Well done Rene.  065.gif

[NogoodBoyo]

Nogood "Howitis....NOT, isit" Boyo

[howitis]

Still here  - still stand by my views. A late goal not changing what was clearly a massacre. Credit where it's due - Burn & Sidwell  were tremendous . Others equally deserve praise for their resolve Hetinga, Richardson, Reither , even Riise. Holtby definitely a fine player but he needs help around him.

The decision to play  Tankovic up top was a disaster but to be fair they realised and changed at HT.

Where have we learnt today, we have commitment and if we defend from the 6 yard box we can get enough bodies behind the ball to make it difficult to score.
We have no real quality going forward (Holtby aside) and cannot keep the ball. People on here have compared the set up to Hodgson. This is not the case Hodgson worked on maintaining possession. We just kept kicking it back waiting for the next onslaught.

14 games in we have lost 10 won 3 and drawn 1. We are no nearer to finding a consistent team and creativity is at an all time low.

Chuffed to get a point but it doesn't cover the cracks and even Mulunsteen himself admitted post game that this was not how he envisaged us playing.

[Burt]

Mate, can I just suggest (to avoid posts accusing you of being a WUM and to make the life of us mods a bit easier) that you give your views on team selection etc. in a more balanced way. It clearly wasn't the worst team selection by any FFC manager ever, and Rene in knowing more about football than all of FOF combined is far from a disgrace.

Thanks

Burt

[Denver Fulham]

Tankovic had a good 45 I thought. We seemed to create more with him on the pitch, Tank and Holtby breaking from deep and turning the defenders.

Bent seemed to do the opposite.

Thank you very much for a crucial, crucial goal Darren..  But after largely lifeless performances against Southampton and again today, I would very much like to never be forced to watch you 'play' in a Fulham shirt again.

---

Great fighting performance, slither of hope still alive.

Tank created nothing..... he was another man on the pitch.

Except for his off-ball checkback to Holtby that created the gaping hole Sidwell ran into for the opening goal, and the counter off the corner where he ran 70 yards with the ball and still showed the poise to slow down, wait for the passing angle and then feed Richardson on a platter for what should have been 2-0.

But please, carry on with your expertise. Fascinating stuff from you.

[Peabody]

The problem was that he posted it before kick off and then disappeared until we went 2-1 down to start lording it all over again.

It is clear that our players confidence was at a very low ebb and maybe today's selection was designed to take that into account, either way, that was a morale boosting performance.

[simplyfulham]

:plus one:

Tankovic had a good 45 I thought. We seemed to create more with him on the pitch, Tank and Holtby breaking from deep and turning the defenders.

Bent seemed to do the opposite.

Thank you very much for a crucial, crucial goal Darren..  But after largely lifeless performances against Southampton and again today, I would very much like to never be forced to watch you 'play' in a Fulham shirt again.

---

Great fighting performance, slither of hope still alive.

:plus one: Seems bad to give Bent the thumbs down after rescuing a point, but what you say is absolutely true..(in my opinion of course !).

im not sure how u have come to this judgement....
Bent did more in that he scored, tracked back and at 1 point made a headed clearance as (i think) Van Persie was going to pounce.

as i said when he come on, it gives certain people a chance to blame someone. madness

Much of Bent's movement, forward and back, is half-assed. He doesn't bust a gut to beat defenders to the ball. Vidic is very slow these days and he wasn't attempting to beat him to the ball. Bent did not, and could not, have done what Tank did in the first half to create a goal scoring chance for Richardson

He was poor at tracking back, winning headers and managed to play Sidwell into danger with a pass into the full back position.

The Tank recovered the ball more times than Bent.
The Tank won more headers than Bent.
The Tank received the ball in the oppo half more times than Bent.
The Tank attempted more forward passes in the oppo half than Bent.

The only thing Bent did today was score. There is an argument to be made that had the Tank stayed on and continued to be an outlet upfront, continued causing trouble for centre halves and continued to work harder to recover the ball, there might not have been a need for a stoppage time equaliser.

The lack of commitment and fight shown by him at times frankly sickens me. You would never see that type of performance from a Mcbride or even Eddie 'tries his best' Johnson (bloody hell did that boy work even if he couldn't finish).

If Bent was putting away at least half of his chances - I would not be hear moaning about his aptitude.

[simplyfulham]

Tankovic had a good 45 I thought. We seemed to create more with him on the pitch, Tank and Holtby breaking from deep and turning the defenders.

Bent seemed to do the opposite.

Thank you very much for a crucial, crucial goal Darren..  But after largely lifeless performances against Southampton and again today, I would very much like to never be forced to watch you 'play' in a Fulham shirt again.

---

Great fighting performance, slither of hope still alive.

Tank created nothing..... he was another man on the pitch. Richardson was the main "creator" if there was one in the 1st half.
Holbty did little but not to fault of his own, it was the tactics. When he had the chance to do summit he pulled out a great pass to Sidwell.
"nd half Bent come on, the right sub i felt. meant we could stretch the defence with a counter attack BUT Holtby for whatever reason became the man pushed up top and Bent often dropped into a defensive midfield position.

due to todays tactics you cant really judge our "attacking" players but like Holtby in the 1st half Bent turned up and did what he had to do.

As far as your comment about Tank 'creating nothing'..

I said that 'We' created more when he was on the pitch..  We.... As in the Team, the Unit created more with him up top.

[Artful Dodger]

OK we were totally outplayed but we managed to sneak a couple of goals , showed great spirit and came away from Old Trafford with a point. A magnificent result for us.

The stats are showing Man. U. put in some 80 crosses, I wonder how many of them Burn cleared, what a game the young lad had.


/quote]
Think I saw he made 22 clearances from crosses! The lad has a future....