Fulham were flying last season and finished 10th in the Premier League which was beyond impressive as many thought that they would be close to the relegation zone at the beginning of last season.
However, since around March this year (still the 2022-23) season, Fulham’s performances have nose-dived. Does anyone know why?
Just scratching through the numbers, their goal output has been horrific mainly, but why is that? And are there any other glaring weaknesses in the team?
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They got JimenASS
Isn’t it obvious? They lost their main striker scoring goals for them. And haven’t found an adequate replacement.
There’s a lot more to it than that.
Losing Mitro was massive. The club ownership knew he was going and didn’t bother to replace him properly. Palhinha was unsettled by events in the end of the window.
In addition, key players Ream and Willian are a year older, which is significant at their age. Pereira was very important last season but had a bad injury at the end - hasn’t come back the same. Tom Cairney also important is in a steady decline of how much he can play due to his knees.
The window was very poor, the first team is weaker than last year due to the reasons above, and really castagne is the only signing yet to show much worth.
Root cause is the owners and club management. They have always underwhelmed at recruitment and are alienating the supporters with a ludicrous ticket pricing policy. The new stand is hideous and the ticket prices there are even more uniquely ridiculous than the other price increases. Our DoF is a joke example of an over indulged spoilt brat - and since the Khans have been in charge we’ve had a parade of failed centre forwards signed (mitro as the only exception was Jokanovic’s doing).
The silva lining (see what I did) is the manager’s new contract and fingers, toes and anything else crossed that the manager can influence the club management into a couple of decent signings in January with the mitro money. That and there appear to be 3/4 equally poor teams. 17th would be taken gratefully right now.
Losing Mitro and no suitable replacement. Lack of creativity. Lots of defensive errors.
But it’s also not that bad as we haven’t had the kindest run of fixtures. We’ve picked up points where we needed to except against Brentford and also gotten a point away at Brighton and Arsenal. I think our results after IB will determine our season.
They were already overperforming their metrics last season so they were due to return back to normal if nothing changed. But instead they replaced Mitrovic who had 14 goals with Jimenez who has had 11 in his last 70 games
They shipped off Mitrovic to Al Hilal and replaced him with Jiménez, who hasn’t been the same since that injury.
Don’t know what they were expecting
They remembered that they were Fulham.
No mitro replacement is the major difference. Ream hasn’t been as good this season (not his fault at all just getting older) and bassey has shown a lot of promise but needs much more time to adapt. Our wingers not having a striker to link up with or cross the ball into the box to has effected them and peereira is also really struggling from not really having a striker to link up with.
The root of almost all problems is us not having a striker. If we get a suitable mitro replacement in Jan we’ll be perfectly fine, if not I still think we’ll survive but you never know. Worrying times but no need to panic. Yet
Simple.
Overperformed last season, and are a worse squad this season.
Prime reason for overperformance was mitrovic goal scoring.
They’ve replaced him with flat out bad players.
I had a cheeky tenner on them to go down at the beginning of the season
Mitrović left simple 😀🇷🇸
Second season syndrome….
Three points of difference helped Fulham last season:
Mitrovic - goal scorer, gone.
Palhinha - elite defensive midfielder when he doesn’t look frustrated that he’s playing for Fulham.
Silva - fantastic in game manager who can adapt as needed; it is said he is very intense on the training pitch and this can get old for players if he doesn’t have the charisma to keep them hungry for the work.
The hardest three positions to recruit for in football currently - striker, defensive midfielder, manager. Last season they had all three, this season they lost one, may lose the second come January and the third may be losing effectiveness without some type of shakeup.
2nd season back
They’re only good when they have ten men. (Sad third place noises)