Season's Best Buys

[toshes mate]

There is a black hole in the Fulham team down to lack of options up front aggravated by Piazon's injury as he was so successfully used as a player who could ghost into dangerous positions and score.  Kebano and Cyriac look capable of performing this role but only when the midfield functions really well.  The serious downsides are the lack of depth and options in the squad both in key midfield positions (cover for McDonald, Johansen, and Cairney) and in strike force so that the squad could be rotated in the engine room and in formation options.  If we played a slightly different game at home then we may have won a lot more points from home games.     

You are right about the lack of cover for McDonald. Johansen and Cairney but you know  the three of them have been playing so well together, and have formed an engine room that has been largely responsible for our success, that up to the Wolves game no one else would have got a look in. Never the less there should be cover there. What has happened to Petsos .

Petsos seemed to have been declared fit and then disappeared again, and so I wonder if he has an aggravated injury issue.
The whole McDonald, Johansen, Cairney thing works too well to be tampered with, but lack of suitable subs to break up game time for the trio have suddenly become obvious with the Petsos problem and Parker's back.  I just believe Fulham have loaned out too many reasonable squad players who may not have been good enough to start but were certainly needed for cover.

I'd love to see Odoi given an opportunity in the McDonald role just to save the latter's legs a bit.

[Jims Dentist]

Re January:
Not sending Martin packing the very first moment he started playing up was a massive mistake.
We could have possibly got some of the loan fee back and would have had the rest of January to get another central striker in.
Letting so many leave whether loans or ridiculously low fees (Smith) has and will prove further to be very bad business.

[filham]

I am surprised by the criticism on this board of our management for not splashing the cash more in the transfer market this season. We have bought 16 new players into the club this season which must be far more than ever before.

Of course it has taken a while for the Coach to develop these players into a good team but after the great result at Newcastle it looked as if the whole exercise had turned into a success.

Now which six of the new players are looking the best and are the most important in a promotion drive.
I would go for:-

1.Kalas
2.McDonald
3.Johansen
4.Malone
5.Aluko
6.Button

I think all of these six should be pencilled in the team sheets for the remaining eight matches.

The big disappointments are Martin and Sigurdsson, the most highly priced of the new signings who now seem to be fixed to the bench. They were signed late in the window were they late panic buys for positions where we were desperate for improved players.

Malone more important than Aluko? Can't agree with that. He's an average full back who's main job is to manage the game time of Sessegnon.

And Martin hasn't been a failure. He's our best striker, who was well on target for 20 goals before the Derby fiasco.

Malone is good for us because for a long while now our left backs have been below average and Martin has been a disappointment because  of the Derby fiasco.