Jack and Loz at the Cottage - Blog 216

Date: 10 April 2022

Opposition: Coventry City

Score: 1-3

Fulham goal scorer: Bobby Decordova-Reid

Weather: Spring returns to SW6

Atmosphere: uncertainty returns to SW6

MOTM (250 appearances): Tim Ream has been our MOTM a lot this season. In fact, he’s been our MOTM for quite a lot of those 250 appearances. There was no MOTM on Sunday but Tim was the best Fulham player on the pitch and other than the aberration for the third goal, was his usual intelligent, incisive self. He is a fantastic, loyal, hard-working and inspirational player for Fulham and is one of the good guys in every way. We hope that Fulham features in his future in whichever way he chooses.

MOTM (non-football): it was great to see another of the good guys, Terry Angus receive his Forever Fulham award

Lunch (and wine): the Blue Boat

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the road to Fulham’s promotion is carpeted with frustration.

After 5 games away from home, we thought the Fulham players would want to impress in front of the home fans, we thought they would have a point (or 3) to prove after the loss to Coventry earlier in the season. And we thought Fulham were the best team in the league.

So we arrived at the Cottage on Sunday after too long away expecting an exciting game in which our team would impose themselves on the opposition, score several goals and come away with promotion a step closer.

Instead, we watched Fulham’s worst performance of the season since the last time we played Coventry and the only reason why this one was slightly better was because it wasn’t raining,

Fulham did not impose themselves on the opposition. We looked worse in every department. Coventry had more accurate strikers, a stronger midfield, a more solid defence and a goalkeeper who could actually - but let’s not go there. Yet.

Overall, Coventry were better organised and disciplined. They had effective tactics and they executed them well. They looked fitter, faster and fresher. Most importantly, they were first to every ball (even Fulham’s short passes) and they were desperate to win the game.

The Fulham players meanwhile, looked like they thought they’d already booked a trophy presentation and would rather have been watching the golf.

Marco Silva blames individual mistakes for the defeat and he is correct, his own individual mistakes being to put Reed and Chalobah together in midfield when there is little evidence this structure works, and not bringing on Seri despite this being suggested loudly by the crowd at regular intervals.

As for the players, we have rarely seen such an error-ridden game. Tosin forgot how to control the ball, Reed was giving it away with merry abandon, and Chalobah mistimed every single interception. The Fulham Press, which was such a big factor in the victory at Boro dissipated in the spring sunshine. Ream only made one mistake but it was a huge one and Fabio seems to have checked out already. The forwards were anonymous for large chunks of the first half and as for Rodak - no, let’s not go there. Yet.

What was interesting about Coventry is that they were dressed like rugby players and some of them even looked a bit like rugby players but they played football really well. Their first goal came from a very well taken corner. Fulham should have a. Not given away so many corners, b. Defended the corner better; and, c. Stepped up a few gears after conceding it. None of this happened. The second goal - no, let’s not go there. Yet.

As for Fulham, one of the big issues was decision making. But one of the bigger issues was that once the wrong decision was made, it was executed poorly. The other big issue is that this was a game of Missed Chances (not missed shances which is a charming way of saying we could have scored more goals in a game we probably won anyway but Missed Chances which lost us the game or at least made us uncompetitive).

Kebano had the biggest miss of the first half with Mitro not far behind. In the second half everyone got in on the act - Harry’s free kick, Neco forcing a decent save, Mitro just wide, Muniz too hesitant and Fabio hitting the bar. Fortunately, Bobby didn’t get the memo and gave us something to cheer about.

The second half was a lot better than the first, partly because of Bobby’s introduction and later (too late in fact) Onomah’s. Robinson used his pace well and the attack took on some semblance of intensity as the clock ran down. But Coventry defended expertly and our composure let us down.

Coventry experimented with time wasting but then decided it would be more profitable to try to score a third goal. What followed was the most Triangle of Doomish moment since the formation’s inception. We can hardly bear to describe it and we feel for the Putney Massive who must have seen the incident in all its gory detail. In short, a melange of miscommunication, hesitation and ineptitude allowed Coventry to seal the victory and increased the volume of the alarm bells already ringing in Fulham ears.

So, time to address the elephant on the pitch. We appreciate that goal-keeping is a difficult job and a thankless task. It’s physically demanding, mentally challenging and some of the kits are horrible. You have to be hyper alert for the whole 90 minutes, even when play is at the far end of the pitch and you have to throw yourself around, contort your body and get up close and physical with outfield players more often than you’d like. It’s not so much that you have to be lucky all the time and they only have to be lucky once, it’s that you have to get every decision and every move right or they get the glory. Goalkeepers are heroes, usually understated, often underrated and totally indispensable.

We like Marek Rodak. He’s strong, calm and agile. He’s kept us in more than one game in recent seasons and he’s made some fantastic saves. But recently, doubts have crept it. There has been a tendency to punch rather than catch and, worse, to flap rather than punch. There’s been some erratic distribution and some questionable passing choices. As probable promotion draws near we have to ask, is Rodak good enough for the Premier League? Unfortunately, we know he isn’t. And it looks like he knows it too.

It would be easy to write this match off as a bad day at the Cottage, as players being tired after the battle at Boro, an opponent raising their game and complacency creeping in with the job almost done. But complacency shouldn’t be allowed and it’s worrying that we were bettered in every area of the pitch. More than that is the fact that we’re going to find ourselves 2-0 down at half time quite often next season and we need to react to it a lot better than we did on Sunday.

Random musings:-

- as good as the Man From Milk Tray look is, it works better when you don’t wear a white T shirt under the black jumper

- we missed TC

- much has already been said about Fabio’s now apparently definite move to Liverpool although you have to wonder if it ever crossed his mind why Neco is keen to come the other way

- back to Ream’s 250th appearance. We hope the third goal doesn’t take the shine off the achievement for him. He really is an outstanding player. We would certainly have conceded more without him on Sunday

- we quite liked the Neapolitan ice cream inspired Coventry away kit but it would have made more sense if they’d worn their home kit given that they looked like Man City…..

-…..and their fans were as good as the players.

Hopefully this result will do more good than harm. The players need to stop believing the hype and get stuck back into training. This should be only a blip and promotion postponed rather than cancelled. And there is a Silva lining: promotion is now more likely to be confirmed when we play Preston than Derby so we will be able to celebrate at the Cottage. At home.