Post Match Thread: Fulham 0-3 Arsenal

[absenteeism]

Harrison Reed....well worth the £8 million and 50k a week?

Abysmal today

Get Frank and Mario win with Onomah just ahead of them

[simplyfulham]

Ream > Hector today....Hector had a horrible game today!

We definitely need to get a quality CB in, but for all the Ream bashers, he actually had quite a good game. Maybe not the defense collectively, but Ream himself I thought looked good.

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[Whitesideup]

Don't understand the criticism on Odoi at all. Our best defender today. Absolutely not on him for Auba's goal, he covered everything but the exact spot Auba managed to hit. Class by Aubameyang, nothing wrong by Odoi.

Same on Cairney, he did what was asked of him. His job is obviously (for anyone who watched us last season) to keep the ball. Which he did. He also helped out defensively, and was our best player other than Odoi imo.

Agree with this.

[SuffolkWhite]

Didn't really expect any result today but wad hopeful. The team will improve, thus was always going to be a hard season. Get behind the team.

[AnOldBrownie]

Didn't really expect any result today but wad hopeful. The team will improve, thus was always going to be a hard season. Get behind the team.

Agreed.


And get behind every team playing against Leeds, Villa, West Brom and Brighton.

Huge Liverpool fan today.

Villa off this week.
WBrom vs Leicester
Brighton vs Chelsea

This can still be a decent opening weekend for Fulham.   Need the promoted sides to lose...as well as Brighton against Chelsea.

[Mullers OG]

My assessment of today out of 10.

Rodak  5
Odoi 7
Hector 4
Ream 5
Cairney 5
Reed 5
Cairney 6
Kebano 5
Onomah 4
Cavaleiro 5
Kamara 3

More firepower needed up front and a new CB - but then everyone knows that except it seems for those recruiting.

[simplyfulham]

In no particular order:

* I'm glad we lost like this because I hope it has taught Parker that this side is NOT good enough to compete in the Premiership
* Moving the ball sideways and backwards in the Premiership doesn't cut it.  It just allows the opposition time to set up and organise behind the ball and we cannot create any chances, we need to be direct.  Several times in the first half, Kebano burnt Odoi by not passing to him on the overlap and just going backwards again.
* Conversely, we are NOT good enough to play out from the back in this league, we don't have the same time on the ball.
* Mitro needs support.  Kamara is not the answer.
*  We have about 5-6 players who would not start for any other Premiership side (Odoi, Ream, Hector, Kamara, BDR, Kebano - I only exclude Cav from this because he has played in the Prem for another side).

On the flip side, I thought Anguissa provided something different when he came on.  He had a certain dynamism and energy with and without the ball.  Perhaps even more impressively, he looked to play the ball forward at times as well. 

I think we've learned that Cairney CANNOT play the deep lying role in the Prem.  He needs to be further up the pitch in support of Mitro.

For me we should drop Cairney for Anguissa and Cavaleiro/AK for Mitro. Need another winger and cb.

I suppose Areola will come in but I don't lay too much blame on Rodak, apart from the 2nd goal that went through his legs.

Anguissa didn't work anywhere near hard enough today, certainly not enough to get in ahead of Cairney

[absenteeism]

My assessment of today out of 10.

Rodak  5
Odoi 7
Hector 4
Ream 5
Cairney 5
Reed 5
Cairney 6
Kebano 5
Onomah 4
Cavaleiro 5
Kamara 3

More firepower needed up front and a new CB - but then everyone knows that except it seems for those recruiting.

Think you are being harsh on Kebano and Kamara there

[Arthur]

Well done to the players for sticking together as a team. In a difficult game, no one gave up. We didn't have enough in any department to give ourselves a chance of picking up one point, let alone three, but thankfully not every team has a striker as good as Aubameyang. I hope the players don't feel too down. I'm sure Scott will work to put us in a stronger position to compete for the points for next week. We are capable of getting something if the players don't let their belief take too much of a knock.

Today was a tough beginning, but overall, in my view, the team deserve more praise than criticism.

[rebel]

everyone looked nervy, but our season wont be defined by these games. It's the Burnleys, leeds, WBAs where we need to win. Anguissa had a great cameo, and mitro will cause people trouble. I hope this spurs on training this week.

The problem is that we've seen this all before, it was predictable, we've seen it before, we hoped it wasn't the case. 

[PaulJ123]

No idea what Scott was thinking with that team.

Saw on the BBC Live Text someone say it was the worst premier league team ever and they weren't wrong!!

To start next game has to be:

Areola
Tete Hector Anyone Else Bryan
Zambo Reed Cairney
Kamara Mitro Cav

Kebano was very ineffective as was Onomah.

[simplyfulham]

The truth is our season will not be defined on the games like today against Arsenal, Man City, Liverpool et al.

Our season will depend on what we do against the other 13 teams in the division. Next week is huge.

———

Having said that, reflecting on today's games and some of the posts here...

I don't understand the comments about Hector, thought he generally was ok and looked miles better than Ream today. Take away the two goals that Ream/Hec were at fault for today, Hector was far better making challenges all over the pitch, far better in the air and used the ball better.

Don't get the love in for Anguissa. A couple of decent touches, but didn't work hard enough at all.

Don't get the flack for Cairney. Again made us tick and was one of the better players today.

[AnOldBrownie]

everyone looked nervy, but our season wont be defined by these games. It's the Burnleys, leeds, WBAs where we need to win. Anguissa had a great cameo, and mitro will cause people trouble. I hope this spurs on training this week.

The problem is that we've seen this all before, it was predictable, we've seen it before, we hoped it wasn't the case.

You see it happening against Leeds, Ipswich and Villa?  I don't.

[fulhamben]

In no particular order:

* I'm glad we lost like this because I hope it has taught Parker that this side is NOT good enough to compete in the Premiership
* Moving the ball sideways and backwards in the Premiership doesn't cut it.  It just allows the opposition time to set up and organise behind the ball and we cannot create any chances, we need to be direct.  Several times in the first half, Kebano burnt Odoi by not passing to him on the overlap and just going backwards again.
* Conversely, we are NOT good enough to play out from the back in this league, we don't have the same time on the ball.
* Mitro needs support.  Kamara is not the answer.
*  We have about 5-6 players who would not start for any other Premiership side (Odoi, Ream, Hector, Kamara, BDR, Kebano - I only exclude Cav from this because he has played in the Prem for another side).

On the flip side, I thought Anguissa provided something different when he came on.  He had a certain dynamism and energy with and without the ball.  Perhaps even more impressively, he looked to play the ball forward at times as well. 

I think we've learned that Cairney CANNOT play the deep lying role in the Prem.  He needs to be further up the pitch in support of Mitro.

For me we should drop Cairney for Anguissa and Cavaleiro/AK for Mitro. Need another winger and cb.

I suppose Areola will come in but I don't lay too much blame on Rodak, apart from the 2nd goal that went through his legs.

Anguissa didn't work anywhere near hard enough today, certainly not enough to get in ahead of Cairney

is that a joke?

[Whitesideup]

There seems always to be comments on about how useless we are. How about a bit of credit for Arsenal?  Who did they beat in their last two competitive games before this one?

Of course I am not saying we had a good game, far from it. And yes, we didn't really threaten a lot, but Arsenal are much better organized under Arteta. We had our work cut out.

One poster commented that we lost the midfield. I thought we generally held our own. If there was a positive, I thought we played the ball confidently in the midfield, especially in the first-half.

[rebel]

No idea what Scott was thinking with that team.

Saw on the BBC Live Text someone say it was the worst premier league team ever and they weren't wrong!!

To start next game has to be:

Areola
Tete Hector Anyone Else Bryan
Zambo Reed Cairney
Kamara Mitro Cav

Kebano was very ineffective as was Onomah.

'Anyone else', the Tealady?

[Chobby]

The team did the best they could taking into account the opposition and the fact we are in the Premiership now, so I'm proud of the boys today who got us back up into the Premiership; however, now we need to move on and upgrade.

My only gripe currently is we have still not brought in even one CB and this sits squarely with the recruitment in fact I'd say it's diabolical, inept and quite frankly a disgrace.

[Fulham76]

CBs URGENTLY REQUIRED!!!!

Sent from my SM-A908B using Tapatalk

Agreed but that's been the case for 3-4 seasons.

[Twig]

My assessment of today out of 10.

Rodak  5
Odoi 7
Hector 4
Ream 5
Cairney 5
Reed 5
Cairney 6
Kebano 5
Onomah 4
Cavaleiro 5
Kamara 3

More firepower needed up front and a new CB - but then everyone knows that except it seems for those recruiting.

There were two Cairneys on the pitch?

[Lyle from Hangeland]

Only at Fulham is losing 3-0 to Arsenal considered a decent performance. Genuinely found that game a bit upsetting because of the performance rather than the scoreline.

We watched a completely different game. The performance wasn't bad I thought. The scoreline flatters Arsenal.