Results
11/08/18 – Fulham 0-2 C Palace
18/08/18 – Tottenham Hotspur 3-1 Fulham
26/08/18 – Fulham 4-2 Burnley
28/08/16 – Fulham 2-0 Exeter (Carabao Cup)
Player Stats (Premier League Games)
Most Minutes Played
M. Le Marchand – 270
A. Mitrovic – 270
J. Seri – 262
T. Cairney – 241
J. Bryan – 228
Most Touches
J. Seri – 297
M. Le Marchand – 247
T. Cairney – 233
J. Bryan – 175
K. McDonald – 169
Most Passes (Completed)
J. Seri – 244 (221)
T. Cairney – 202 (190)
M. Le Marchand – 193 (168)
K. McDonald – 150 (129)
C. Chambers – 123 (108)
Passing Accuracy
A. Anguissa – 96.72%
T. Cairney – 94.06%
J. Seri – 90.57%
D. Odoi – 88.89%
C. Chambers – 87.80%
Key Passes
L. Vietto – 7
T. Cairney – 6
J. Seri – 6
A. Kamara – 5
J. Bryan – 4
A. Schurrle – 4
Most Dribbles
A. Anguissa – 4
T. Cairney – 3
J. Seri – 3
A. Schurrle – 3
T. Fosu-Mensah – 2
A. Kamara – 2
Luciano Vietto – 2
Most Shots
A. Mitrovic – 15
A. Schurrle – 11
L. Vietto – 4
T. Cairney – 3
T. Fosu-Mensah – 3
R. Sessegnon – 3
Most Shots on Target
A. Mitrovic – 7
A. Schurrle – 5
A. Anguissa – 2
Ryan Sessegnon – 2
Tom Cairney – 1
Cyrus Christie – 1
T. Fosu-Mensah – 1
A. Kamara – 1
J. Seri – 1
Most Tackles
M. Le Marchand – 8
J. Seri – 7
C. Chambers – 5
K. McDonald – 5
A. Anguissa – 5
Most Interceptions
J. Seri – 7
C. Chambers – 5
M. Le Marchand – 5
R. Sessegnon – 3
A. Anguissa – 2
T. Cairney – 2
Most Aerials Won
M. Le Marchand – 8
A. Mitrovic – 8
K. McDonald – 4
D. Odoi – 3
C. Chambers – 2
T. Fosu-Mensah – 2
FPL Highest Scorer (Percentage of FPL participants using them)
A. Mitrovic – 24 (11.4%)
J. Seri – 13 (1.8%)
L. Vietto – 10 (0.6%)
T. Cairney – 9 (2.2%)
A. Schurrle – 9 (3.7%)
Fabri – 8 (0.4%)
R. Sessegnon – 8 (6.5%)
Player of the Month
Aleksander Mitrovic – Not just because of his goals, but his all-round play as well. He’s not just a big physical brute, his movement both on and off the ball creates space for his teammates and problems for the opposition.
Round-up
So, how’s the first month back treating you? Still getting used to seeing Sessegnon on the Match of The Day introduction? Happy you don’t have to go looking for Quest on a Saturday night? Yeah, me too. At least the off the pitch stuff has gone swimmingly because we can’t exactly say the same for what’s happening on the pitch.
Nah, that’s probably a tad harsh, I’d say we’re probably about where we should be in terms of on the pitch performances. We always knew the first game against Palace was going to be tough, especially when we had to bed in a few of our late window signings without any friendlies in between. Whether it was first game nerves, whether it was just us being our usual slow starters, maybe (in fact probably) Palace are just a better team than us. I’m not going to get too bogged down over the first result.
We then moved on to Spurs at Wembley (yes Wembley, because people seem to have forgotten that part). Again, I’m not going to go into too much detail about what happened and where we could have improved. This was the kind of performance we used to dish out to teams last season. Spurs are a consistent Top 4 challenger, we are a team that just got promoted. You’re crazy if you thought there was going to be any other outcome.
What we need to remember, is we can afford to lose games early in the season. This isn’t like last year where we can’t afford to lose more than six games say, to stay near the top. In theory, we can afford to lose thirteen games this season, and still be safe, so I’m not going to get too angry if we concede a last-minute goal away at Newcastle say, we’ll be alright by the time the season wraps up in May.
Burnley was a pretty straightforward affair. I didn’t expect it to go any different (result wise, not talking about the score, nor the flurry of goals in the first half), but when you factor in Burnley’s European exploits & the fact that this is one of the ‘easier’ teams you’d expect us to get something from, I’d have started asking questions if we didn’t win this. These are the games we need to be targeting to get points from. Every promoted team should target ten wins in order to stay up, we have one and we’ve got 35 games to find the other nine, starting with Brighton on Saturday.
I suppose we need to talk about the goalkeeping situation at some point, so here goes. I maintain Bettinelli should be our number one and I thought it was flat-out wrong that Slav brought in someone to challenge him for that spot. If he wanted to bring in an experienced backup keeper (for some reason I’m thinking Michel Vorm, but you can insert someone else in if you’d like), I wouldn’t have had a problem, but Betts is one of those players that earnt the right to be in a ‘his position to lose’ scenario.
Rating
Overall, I’d give this month a 6/10. Could be better, could have been A LOT worse, but we are roughly where I expected us to be when the fixtures came out.
September Prediction
01/09/18 – Brighton 1-2 Fulham
15/09/18 – Manchester City 3-1 Fulham
22/09/18 – Fulham 2-0 Watford
29/09/18 – Everton 2-1 Fulham
