1-2 Fulham, A Post Match Thread

[CosbehFox]

2 minutes ago, StanSP said:

First time seeing the goal. There seemed to be a bit of debate in the sky sports studio and from the commentator in the ground. He even thought it would be disallowed

 

There's literally nothing to check?! 

 

Leno even pushes Vardy away and Faes doesn't even head it towards Leno

 

Seemed to take a while to be confirmed? 

Mike Dean in the studio even seemed to think it'd be ruled out offside as well but was more erring that there could be a possibility the goal would be fine. 

 

The linesman gave the offside. So VAR had to give the goal hence the scrunity. Very strange really and an example of VAR has led to this over the top supervision of everything 

[whoareyaaa]

1 hour ago, Sunbury Fox said:

Before the game I was thinking that this was probably one of our best opportunities to get some away points this season, on the basis that I expect these will be lower mid-table at best and Craven Cottage is hardly intimidating for visiting teams. But let's face it, it was obvious from the off that Fulham are vastly superior all over the pitch. We're going to have to look elsewhere for an established club that might drop off and join us in the relegation scrap, to give us a chance of somehow staying up. 

 

But to be honest, Cooper's team selections and tactics are not giving us a fighting chance. For example:

 

1. If you're going to park the bus, at least select fast players up front, who are able to dribble and get you up the pitch, to give you a chance of hitting the opposition on the transition. To that end, Mavididi must start over Reid from now on.

 

2. Why is Ayew first off the bench less than 24 hours after signing - and then given priority to take a dangerous free kick? It's like Cooper regards him as some sort of superstar, FFS. God knows what Stephy must be thinking.

 

3. I realise that they scored just as he was about to make his second set of subs, but surely when you've just gone 2-1 down you reconsider whether it makes sense to have 3 CDMs on the field when you're now chasing a goal to save the game?

 

4. Why the f--- is Ricardo not only not starting but getting zero minutes? Utter madness!

 

In terms of individuals who did okay - I thought that Mads was good again (though will be a bit disappointed by the second goal, given he got a strong hand on the shot), the CBs were solid (apart from 1 Faes brainfart when he tried a flick in his own penalty area), plus I'm surprised to read some negativity about VK. I thought he did a good job negating Traoré, who was subbed off early. And although he didn't get forward much, that was more because we kept losing the ball in midfield and so struggled to get out of our own half. Abdul was dangerous at times but the forward players were feeding off scraps. 

 

Reid was again the weakest link but I'm very worried that against Villa, Cooper will select him and Ayew on the flanks, ahead of 3 CDMs, in an attempt to be solid and have lots of PL experience on the pitch. 

Some good points, I thought bringing Ayew on was a bit shit as well after only being here for 24hrs when Mav was sitting on the bench.

 

It seems like we are just setting up with no intention of going out to win the game, soon as we got the ball in there half we looked clueless.

 

Starting Ried is basically throwing in the towel before we have even started Fulham no exactly what they are up against with Reid where as Mav would have been less so and more dangerous going forward.

 

I think the way we setup in the midfield gave us no chance yesterday I thought he would change it around a bit, starting Vardy was another shit decision.

 

Another thing to add I would rather give younger players a chance to come on and develop than bring in some pensioners who don't really effect the game that much.

Edited 25 August by whoareyaaa

[CosbehFox]

A few words on Leicester. As stated above, the team are presently one playing in Cooper’s pragmatic image this season - defensive, reactive, competent but not spectacular. It’s understandable - newly promoted sides face a major challenge in competing in the Premier League (it took us three attempts!) and Cooper has to stabilise a ship recently robbed of its established manager. There’s some benefit to this - the experience and ability in the team gives them a far stronger prospect of survival than last year’s contenders had, and they demonstrated last week that they can take points off Tottenham.

I can’t help but wonder, however, whether the approach is too cautious. Much as I would love to depict Fulham as all-conquering juggernauts, Craven Cottage is not an impossible place to get a win - at times in the match, particularly when Leicester were offering scant little but clearances and a prayer, I wondered whether a little more positivity in the approach would have punished us in the match. Vardy was completely isolated and stuck making offside runs because Buonanotte was hopelessly deep and Fatawu and BDR were nowhere in sight - this points to a lack of alertness to the attackers, and a deeper issue with defenders using the ball positively. Whilst I think Faes and Vestergaard were fairly competent in the defensive elements of the game, their distribution is hideous, and along with Ndidi were liabilities when trying to move the ball beyond their own final third.

They had a tough task, of course - Kristiansen and Justin had horrible matches on the wings and made situations around the backline generally quite tense - but building play requires a positive mindset, a belief that the football is yours to use, and the sense I get is that Leicester were a bit scared of it today. Only Harry Winks looked consistently positive and forward thinking throughout the match, and played passes of any threat for Fulham to deal with. I think Buonanotte has the ability to be a great forward for Leicester but he is operating too deep, and for as much as I love Bobby he is too tame a footballer to be the main attacker on the wing. Fatawu was very poor on the ball and only started playing when he was allowed to attack in the dying section of the game - noticeably, with Ayew and Mavididi alongside him in the front three. Will Cooper reconstruct the team around these effective players, and try and put some belief into Leicester’s squad? I think he is a terrific coach, and his work at Nottingham Forest alone showcases his aptitude for the fight, but if he wants to keep Leicester up he will do well to look at his opponent today and draw upon the attacking talents in the team.
 

From a Fulham fan in the comments of Guardian match report - so many salient points 

[SafewayFox]

Listening to Cooper’s post match comments on WYS (I’m clearly a sucker for punishment).

 

A few things irked me -

 

1) The obviously dumb founding ones on Ricardo which seem ironic considering he previously said he’d watched all of last season’s games.

 

2) He NEEDS to drop the rhetoric that were some plucky Championship club that hasn’t played PL before…that mentality worked for Forest who had been in exile but it’s a defeatist attitude NOT pragmatic and can’t exude confidence when that’s one of the biggest things he needs to do for our players.

 

3) His comments about Ayew constantly playing in the PL like a badge of honour all but confirm that he’s definitely demanded his signing which still feels such a poor business decision.

[steveb]

23 minutes ago, CosbehFox said:

The linesman gave the offside. So VAR had to give the goal hence the scrunity. Very strange really and an example of VAR has led to this over the top supervision of everything 

Personally i thought the ref was the best player on the pitch

 

[UniFox21]

JJ had 2 positional clangers and they score from both.

 

Reid was absent throughout the game and again we were way too deep. 

[Bluearmyfox28]

For me Cooper made a comment that concerned me after the Tottenham game, he stated “the fans gave me the confidence to go for it” or something along those lines…. That would explain his Home and away record, he shouldn’t need the fans to dictate how he approaches the game.

[ClaphamFox]

7 minutes ago, Bluearmyfox28 said:

For me Cooper made a comment that concerned me after the Tottenham game, he stated “the fans gave me the confidence to go for it” or something along those lines…. That would explain his Home and away record, he shouldn’t need the fans to dictate how he approaches the game.

I fear the subject of Cooper’s away record is one we’re going to keep returning to this season. 

Edited 25 August by ClaphamFox

[Lesterlad]

There was no energy. No tactics. No team work. Players gave ball away too often. We attacked in 1s and 2s. Why bring Mcateer on for VK when Ricardo is on bench and JJ could have moved to the left. Too many things were wrong yesterday. A Fulham fan rang into talk sport last night and said the team were awful and going down but the fans were great and non stop singing. 

[J. James]

I can't quite understand the outrage and apparent surprise from some posters.

 

Only a deluded fool would have thought we would be anything other than dreadful this season and, well, we clearly are.

 

This is not down to the players, and Cooper is doing his best with one hand tied and the other with restricted movement.

 

I was hoping for Corberan like many but Coooer is here for good or ill.

 

Frankly we all have a good idea where the blame for our problems lies.

 

As soon as it became apparent that the owners were going to let the fraud take us down, our trajectory was obvious and our downward ride is not over yet, like all successful businesses upward progress is slow and hard, but the downslope is fast and easy.

 

We armchair experts may not agree with Coopers tactics/signings/provenance/looks, but his knowledge of the game and the financial realities are immeasurably better than anyone on here.

 

His remit is keep us up, nothing more, nothing less and that is how he and we will have to judge this season.

[The Doctor]

54 minutes ago, ClaphamFox said:

I fear the subject of Cooper’s away record is one we’re going to keep returning to this season. 

it will be, because he doesn't know how to set up a team and instead just relies on a home atmosphere for the players to feed off. Given how passive our home fans are with a few exceptions, I can't see that working that well for him 

[ForestAreMagic]

There’s not much us Forest fans would criticise Cooper for, but we’d all agree that he usually set us up far too passively away from home.  There were many occasions (including v Leicester)  where we looked like a League 1 side - really terrible; in awe of the opposition; like we had no idea how to even attempt to get up the pitch.  Then we’d play really good teams at home (Liverpool, Spurs, Arsenal) and beat them. 

[guest123]

back to normal, a great day out with the hindrance of interrupting it with 90 minutes of football (and getting ****ing soaked walking to the ground)

[Sunbury Fox]

2 hours ago, CosbehFox said:

A few words on Leicester. As stated above, the team are presently one playing in Cooper’s pragmatic image this season - defensive, reactive, competent but not spectacular. It’s understandable - newly promoted sides face a major challenge in competing in the Premier League (it took us three attempts!) and Cooper has to stabilise a ship recently robbed of its established manager. There’s some benefit to this - the experience and ability in the team gives them a far stronger prospect of survival than last year’s contenders had, and they demonstrated last week that they can take points off Tottenham.

I can’t help but wonder, however, whether the approach is too cautious. Much as I would love to depict Fulham as all-conquering juggernauts, Craven Cottage is not an impossible place to get a win - at times in the match, particularly when Leicester were offering scant little but clearances and a prayer, I wondered whether a little more positivity in the approach would have punished us in the match. Vardy was completely isolated and stuck making offside runs because Buonanotte was hopelessly deep and Fatawu and BDR were nowhere in sight - this points to a lack of alertness to the attackers, and a deeper issue with defenders using the ball positively. Whilst I think Faes and Vestergaard were fairly competent in the defensive elements of the game, their distribution is hideous, and along with Ndidi were liabilities when trying to move the ball beyond their own final third.

They had a tough task, of course - Kristiansen and Justin had horrible matches on the wings and made situations around the backline generally quite tense - but building play requires a positive mindset, a belief that the football is yours to use, and the sense I get is that Leicester were a bit scared of it today. Only Harry Winks looked consistently positive and forward thinking throughout the match, and played passes of any threat for Fulham to deal with. I think Buonanotte has the ability to be a great forward for Leicester but he is operating too deep, and for as much as I love Bobby he is too tame a footballer to be the main attacker on the wing. Fatawu was very poor on the ball and only started playing when he was allowed to attack in the dying section of the game - noticeably, with Ayew and Mavididi alongside him in the front three. Will Cooper reconstruct the team around these effective players, and try and put some belief into Leicester’s squad? I think he is a terrific coach, and his work at Nottingham Forest alone showcases his aptitude for the fight, but if he wants to keep Leicester up he will do well to look at his opponent today and draw upon the attacking talents in the team.
 

From a Fulham fan in the comments of Guardian match report - so many salient points 

Agree with much of that but his/her comments about Faes and Vesty are well off. They are both very decent on the ball, certainly much better than the Fulham CBs yesterday for a start. They played some good balls into CM but the midfielders, especially Wilf, struggled to progress it further. 

Edited 25 August by Sunbury Fox

[Pliskin]

2 hours ago, CosbehFox said:

A few words on Leicester. As stated above, the team are presently one playing in Cooper’s pragmatic image this season - defensive, reactive, competent but not spectacular. It’s understandable - newly promoted sides face a major challenge in competing in the Premier League (it took us three attempts!) and Cooper has to stabilise a ship recently robbed of its established manager. There’s some benefit to this - the experience and ability in the team gives them a far stronger prospect of survival than last year’s contenders had, and they demonstrated last week that they can take points off Tottenham.

I can’t help but wonder, however, whether the approach is too cautious. Much as I would love to depict Fulham as all-conquering juggernauts, Craven Cottage is not an impossible place to get a win - at times in the match, particularly when Leicester were offering scant little but clearances and a prayer, I wondered whether a little more positivity in the approach would have punished us in the match. Vardy was completely isolated and stuck making offside runs because Buonanotte was hopelessly deep and Fatawu and BDR were nowhere in sight - this points to a lack of alertness to the attackers, and a deeper issue with defenders using the ball positively. Whilst I think Faes and Vestergaard were fairly competent in the defensive elements of the game, their distribution is hideous, and along with Ndidi were liabilities when trying to move the ball beyond their own final third.

They had a tough task, of course - Kristiansen and Justin had horrible matches on the wings and made situations around the backline generally quite tense - but building play requires a positive mindset, a belief that the football is yours to use, and the sense I get is that Leicester were a bit scared of it today. Only Harry Winks looked consistently positive and forward thinking throughout the match, and played passes of any threat for Fulham to deal with. I think Buonanotte has the ability to be a great forward for Leicester but he is operating too deep, and for as much as I love Bobby he is too tame a footballer to be the main attacker on the wing. Fatawu was very poor on the ball and only started playing when he was allowed to attack in the dying section of the game - noticeably, with Ayew and Mavididi alongside him in the front three. Will Cooper reconstruct the team around these effective players, and try and put some belief into Leicester’s squad? I think he is a terrific coach, and his work at Nottingham Forest alone showcases his aptitude for the fight, but if he wants to keep Leicester up he will do well to look at his opponent today and draw upon the attacking talents in the team.
 

From a Fulham fan in the comments of Guardian match report - so many salient points 

Good post that, sums the game up perfectly. 

[Pliskin]

7 minutes ago, Sunbury Fox said:

Agree with much of that but his/her comments about Faes and Vesty are well off. They are both very decent on the ball, certainly much better than the Fulham CBs yesterday for a start. They played some good balls into CM but the midfielders, especially Wilf, struggled to progress it further. 

They obviously don’t get to watch us every week. 
 

At the moment we’re stuck between two styles of play, Coopers pragmatic approach and a little bit of Enzo ball. Vesty and Wout were just trying to play their game as normal. Vesty was punching passes through the press, but because Winks was the only midfielder functioning in the ball we just kept giving it away. When this happens it’s easy to look at both players and being poor on the ball, and none of the passes come off. 
 

At the moment collectively it’s not working, so perhaps Cooper is quick enough to try and alter his tactics slightly, but this remains to be seen. Overall they’ve made some very good points. 

[CrazyKopCorner]

1 hour ago, Bluearmyfox28 said:

For me Cooper made a comment that concerned me after the Tottenham game, he stated “the fans gave me the confidence to go for it” or something along those lines…. That would explain his Home and away record, he shouldn’t need the fans to dictate how he approaches the game.

Far too slow to make the changes yesterday - reacted after they scored not prior to when it was more than obvious we needed to make at least 3 changes

 

When the management of the team is at a level when I think I could do a better job then we're in serious trouble  

[grth2004]

43 minutes ago, ForestAreMagic said:

There’s not much us Forest fans would criticise Cooper for, but we’d all agree that he usually set us up far too passively away from home.  There were many occasions (including v Leicester)  where we looked like a League 1 side - really terrible; in awe of the opposition; like we had no idea how to even attempt to get up the pitch.  Then we’d play really good teams at home (Liverpool, Spurs, Arsenal) and beat them. 

Would you take him back ? 

[Sunbury Fox]

28 minutes ago, Pliskin said:

They obviously don’t get to watch us every week. 
 

At the moment we’re stuck between two styles of play, Coopers pragmatic approach and a little bit of Enzo ball. Vesty and Wout were just trying to play their game as normal. Vesty was punching passes through the press, but because Winks was the only midfielder functioning in the ball we just kept giving it away. When this happens it’s easy to look at both players and being poor on the ball, and none of the passes come off. 
 

At the moment collectively it’s not working, so perhaps Cooper is quick enough to try and alter his tactics slightly, but this remains to be seen. Overall they’ve made some very good points. 

I think we have to start Skipp with Winks to give us 2 players who are able to control and manoeuvre the ball through PL-level presses in midfield. Without that we'll never be able to get the ball to the likes of Facundo and Abdul, which is our best/only chance of creating chances.

Edited 25 August by Sunbury Fox

[Sunbury Fox]

6 minutes ago, grth2004 said:

Would you take him back ? 

I wish they would!

[Pliskin]

1 hour ago, J. James said:

I can't quite understand the outrage and apparent surprise from some posters.

 

Only a deluded fool would have thought we would be anything other than dreadful this season and, well, we clearly are.

 

This is not down to the players, and Cooper is doing his best with one hand tied and the other with restricted movement.

 

I was hoping for Corberan like many but Coooer is here for good or ill.

 

Frankly we all have a good idea where the blame for our problems lies.

 

As soon as it became apparent that the owners were going to let the fraud take us down, our trajectory was obvious and our downward ride is not over yet, like all successful businesses upward progress is slow and hard, but the downslope is fast and easy.

 

We armchair experts may not agree with Coopers tactics/signings/provenance/looks, but his knowledge of the game and the financial realities are immeasurably better than anyone on here.

 

His remit is keep us up, nothing more, nothing less and that is how he and we will have to judge this season.

Posts like this just highlight some still aren’t able to grasp the point…..

[The Guvnor]

20 hours ago, Pliskin said:

**** sake, come on? Seriously? 
 

Fulham are a bang average premier league team, who incidentally looked poor after their first goal for most of the game. Two goals conceded were the sort of goals you see scored on a playground in a primary school during morning break, and we looked about as dangerous as chihuahua with no teeth. 
 

You wouldn’t mind if we played really well and were unlucky, but we didn’t, we didn’t even look capable of even troubling Fulham, they were playing at snails pace by the 70th minute and we still couldn’t produce anything. 
 

That performance was disgusting, there no evidence of a tactical plan at all, Fulham will be genuinely laughing in that changing room as to how easy it was to win, they won’t even need a shower, probably not a drop of sweat on them. 
 

Employing Cooper was another critical error. 

Fulham are now an established Premier League team, who finished last season 21 points above relegation and a couple of points from tenth spot.  I would imagine the realists on here would accept that we are an average PL team whose primary mission would be survival this season.

[ForestAreMagic]

16 minutes ago, grth2004 said:

Would you take him back ? 

The jury is still out a little on Nuno, but I ended last season thinking he was a slight upgrade.  The football is certainly more enjoyable and we compete with most teams now, even if the results haven’t always reflected that.  
 

Interested by the comments about Leicester’s recruitment.  Cooper (we believe) drove a lot of Forest’s recruitment, despite the jokes about Marinakis.  He tended to go for players he’d known in past lives.  When he’d known them from England (eg Gibbs-White, Hudson-Odoi) that was great.  A couple from elsewhere were terrible though - Ayew and Shelvey.  
 

I very rarely disagreed with his team selections, and he was usually an effective user of substitutes.  

[Fear Of The Fox]

At some point before that stupid second goal I was thinking we might get away with a point. We were bad but Fulham were lethargic and we've managed somehow to bring them down to our level. This situation didn't change much even after we've conceded the second. 

The question is where do we go from here. Cooper needs to change his tactics, this passive approach won't get us anywhere. We need to be more adventurous and if we go down let's go down by fighting and by playing some attacking football. 

Also not appointing a manager like Will Still or Hurzeler was a huge mistake. There are some relatively young managers out there who have good tactical knowledge. I don't care if they spend hours and hours playing Football Manager like Still and Hurzeler. I prefer it to the footballers who play every day EA's football abomination. 

[l444ry]

Not sure how many actually thought we'd hit the ground running, especially after our pre-season and transfer window, but the run for the hills panic seems a bit premature at this stage?