Form: Overall, Norwich have had a very consistent season, winning 13 games, drawing 13 and losing 12 (another reason to want Fulham to win, because that would leave them with 13’s across the board, and there’s something aesthetically pleasing about that). However, they haven’t been on a good run of form recently, having only won two games out of nine since the start of February. They did, however, win their last game before the international break, 3-2 at home to strugglers Reading. Goals from Mario Vrancic, Grant Hanley & James Maddison helping them to victory.
Formation: 4-2-3-1. Much more rigid than our 4-3-3, where the likes of Cairney & Johansen take turns attacking and dropping deep.
Dangerman: I know I said in the last edition that all ex-Fulham players would automatically fill this spot, but James Husband hasn’t been a regular for Norwich this season, so there’s no guarantee on him featuring. So attention must switch to James Maddison. Norwich’s top scorer this season.
Battle to watch: Grant Hanley v Aleksander Mitrovic – Two men who will know each other very well from their time at Newcastle last season. Seeing a good ‘old-fashioned’ centre-half go up against an ‘old-fashioned’ centre-forward should be an interesting show during the game. On a side note, I’m also looking forward to seeing Kevin McDonald trying to keep James Maddison quiet, as doing so will more or less keep their attack under wraps.
Head to Head:
- This is only the 22nd league season in which Fulham and Norwich have met – although that includes 6 of the last 7 campaigns.
- Good Friday will be the 44th league meeting between the clubs – Fulham have won 19, Norwich have won 11 and there have been 13 draws.
- Norwich have won just 1 of the last 17 meetings between the clubs – and 1 of the last 21 in all comps – going back to 1986.
- In that time, Fulham have won 6 and drawn 3 of their 10 trips to Carrow Road.
- In the last 19 years, there have been games between the clubs where Fulham have scored exactly 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 goals.
Opposition View: (@rosssanders5): In a season where we are clearly under transition, however still underperformed in my opinion, we have had a few positives. James Maddison being the obvious standout and like Fulham with Sessegnon when we do sell it should be for big money! We’ve also introduced young Jamal Lewis in at left back and he’s started excellently and looks a real prospect. Other notable players are Zimmerman and Trybull both from Germany who look great finds.
As for the negatives for us, our home form is certainly the main one with us only winning 6 from our 19 home games. This has mainly come from our lack of scoring with Oliveira losing his touch and I personally feel the board let us down in both transfer windows with not improving us in the attacking areas when we all knew that was where we needed to strengthen most. Without Maddison’s goals, we’d be a lot further down the table.
I don’t have much confidence at Carrow Road this year and with Fulham coming here with one of the best teams in the division, I’m saying a 2-1 Fulham win.
Prediction: Having had two weeks to get over the collapse against QPR, which hopefully you can just put down to QPR being ‘more up for it’ than we were on the day, this one will hopefully be more straightforward. We’ve not been too bad at Carrow Road over the years and this weekend should be no exception.
Norwich 0 – 2 Fulham
