Obafemi Scores and Then His Leg Falls Off
Fulham in the ‘What the fuck is it called this year’ Cup.
When the draw was made, there was a chance of getting any southern based teams
in this round, including potential away trips to grounds that we’ve never been
to before and even the chance of playing them from down the road ... and we got
Fulham away, I think the overriding word was “boring”.
Ralph made the right noises at the Brighton game about wanting to take the cup seriously but you know that it’s going to be mix-and-match at best with several of our squad players likely to be given a run out. It will be interesting to see just how far he goes with this. Will he just pick the ones that are on the bench regularly or will he delve deep into the list of players that we don’t actually want any more like Elyounoussi and Mario Lemina whose appearances this year have been restricted solely to Instagram. For what it’s worth, I feel we should absolutely take it seriously.
Slightly disturbingly, it was another one of those slightly George Burley-esque team selections where we couldn’t work from the list of names who was playing where. The three definite defenders were Cedric, Danso and Bednarek but after that it was a bit of a lottery. I assumed that Cedric would be on the left and JWP on the right but in the event, Hojbjerg of all people was deployed at left back. With both Boufal and Djenepo in the starting line-up on the wings and Redmond and Obafemi up front, there was going to be a big workload for Romeu and JWP in the middle. Alex McCarthy, our best goalkeeper in my opinion, was chosen to start following Fraser Forster‘s return to Celtic on-loan.
The first half was… exactly the same as the first half against Brighton in that it was completely shit, though it was lacking the ninja drop kick red card tackle. Fulham had fielded about 8 reserve players so they were equally as disjointed as we were. The only real chance was a free-kick from the left which McCarthy did well to tip onto the bar at the top corner and then recovered quickly enough to push a subsequent header over the bar. We did fuck all going forward. It’s hard to get excited about winning a couple of good throw-ins.. One positive was that both Boufal and Djenepo were working very hard when we didn’t have the ball, which was about 70% of the time.
For the second successive game it was the same players but a different team that emerged for the second half. It was almost like we stepped 10 yards up the pitch and got in their faces and the Fulham youngsters just couldn’t handle it.
Fulham started knocking the ball about at the back and got into trouble and an eventual shite clearance from the left back was intercepted by Romeu on the edge of the box but he is the one player who you would not want to get the ball in that situation… I mean there are a few of them but possibly the worst one to get the ball in that situation. On goes Romeu .... drills it straight of the goalkeeper instead of putting it in the big wide open net thing.
No matter though as our best midfielder picks up the ball at left back and puts Redmond away down the left and he lines up the defender in much the same way that Boufal did against Brighton and drills it across to where Michael Obafemi knocks into the empty net from a yard out. We’re going to fucking Wembley I can feel it
Once we have taken the lead then Bednarek was hauled off and Yoshida took his place. It would have been nice to have brought on Wesley Hoedt as Fulham is the ground where he fucked up so badly that Hughes got sacked and Hoedt himself got binned. There was another like-for-like swap a few minutes later as Ings replaced Obafemi who had collapsed again in much the same way as he always collapses every time he reaches top speed. I mean this may just be a cramp but as I said the last time this happened, there is no point in being quick if every time you reach full speed your hamstrings turn to cheese.
By now is was looking like a case of how many goals we can score as Hojbjerg drove forward from left back, finding Redmond who shot was not fantastic and easily saved but more worryingly, he collapsed in a heap and had to be replaced with Shane Long.
Our new strike partnership combine straight away with Long flicking the ball on and Ings finding himself through on goal on the right hand side. He chopped back inside the last defender and with the whole goal to aim at, managed to hit the goalkeeper in much the same way that Romeu had done earlier. We are determined not to put this game to bed.
Fulham are still trying to play the ball out of defence without being remotely good enough to do so and le Marchard, who I can’t believe they haven’t got rid of, gives the ball straight to Ings on the edge of the box and Danny once again closes in on the goalkeeper and kicks it straight at him to win a corner. If this Cup has introduced a rule where four corners equals a goal then this would be great but as it stands, in the rules for the What the Fuck is it Called this Year Cup, it’s just a fucking corner.
Once again the high-press works as Fulham show great levels of cluelessness and Romeo this time nicks the ball, knocks it to Ings who shows great presence of mind after his shot his blocked to knock it to Shane Long and that’s all you need to know. Luckily there were a few fans behind that goal so some poor ball-boy didn’t have to scramble among the empty seats like in other parts of the ground in order to get the ball back.
Luckily, none of this profligacy was costly as Fulham barely got in our half of the pitch in the second half so we progress to the third round, Job done and once again, the end justifies the means.
For this match - Garbage first half, better second-half, scored, wasted a few chances, . Redmond’s injury is a worry as when players collapse when there is no one near them then it is always a little bit worrying and hopefully he will only miss a couple of weeks at worst. Ralph will have learned quite a lot from this game with a centre back partnership of Danso and Bednarek looking decent and Cedric having a fairly solid game right back.
JWP was incredibly light-weight in midfield despite trying Ralph clearly having a word with him after his non-tackling effort against Brighton. Sure, he put some tackles in but looked like he was trying to get sent off in the first half. Both Boufal and Djenepo carried on their hard work on the wings and Boufal in particular was lucky to escape injury after a very cynical scythe down by Fulham player which was 100% deliberate and nowhere near the ball. From me, that has to be a red card but the ref bottled it.
Job done. Onto the next round and onto Manchester United at home on Saturday. The injury to Redmond is a bit of a bastard but in Djenepo and Boufal, we have players ready to step in and replace the direct running and unpredictability the Redmond brings so it’s not all bad news. Personally I think it’ll be a 5-3-2 formation on Saturday so it’ll be two of Ings, Adams , Boufal and Djenepo up front. Bring it on.
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