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?
They got JimenASS
Second season syndrome….
Maybe they’re missing a certain mad Serbian
Right. Who’s going to miss all their penalties this season?
They also replaced him with two of the least convincing, most underperforming attacking players in recent history
They overperformed the stats last season and have no real goalscorers anywhere on the pitch since Mitrovic left
They overperformed the stats last season
Yep, I remember reading an article before this season tipping them to struggle, based on it being unlikely they overperform their underlying numbers two seasons running.
I think reducing games to xG is a really reductive way of applying stats. If xG and actual goals is unbalanced over 38 games then there’s something it’s missing.
I’ll step off my soapbox now.
It’s almost as if xg is a pretty shitty stat to base things off
I don’t know how that’s the takeaway you’ve pulled from that. xG stats suggested they were overperforming last year and they would be unlikely to do as well this season. So far, that appears to be correct. I’m not a lover of expected ‘x’ stats but the models are working as intended in this instance.
Funny, this gave me the opposite impression actually.
As in, xg provided clarity as to why they haven’t been performing as well as last season, because they aren’t outpacing their xg as much as they were.
I could be totally wrong, and that’s fine, that was just my honest first impression of the situation.
Or alternatively their performance this season is demonstrating it’s a good one.
Well that’s not fair. Antonee Robinson is our joint top scorer (2 OGs)
Unrelated, but what do Fulham fans think of Antonee Robinson? As a Spurs fan I don’t watch Fulham all that often, but have been quite impressed with him the few times I’ve seen him play over the last couple seasons
Sometimes he’s great. Other times will have your screaming in despair (first half v Brighton I’m looking at you)
Fucking rapid, improved on his first touch more and his crossing is getting better, but fuck me can he have some serious lapses of concentration when defending. A little inconsistent. Good player but has some major flaws
Likely because of Mitrovic leaving because Mitrovic was practically their Bruno G or Rodri, although he was one man, he was essential for their attack and you can tell as once he got the red card and was absent from the team, they looked mid. There are probably more factors to this that I don’t know of so best leave this to Fulham fans.
Honestly sums it up as best we can i think
They are shite
Insightful commentary
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 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 remembered that they were Fulham.
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.
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
Is the Marco Silva effect - he doesn’t last three years at any football club….trust us limpeh all of us Evertonians know firsthand of him
I had a cheeky tenner on them to go down at the beginning of the season
They sold their focal point and replaced him with a striker who hasn’t scored goals in a few seasons since a bad head injury
They lost the main outlet to goals without a plan around it