I'm going to try and not rant, but with a performance like that it may be impossible not to. Before I really get into it I'd like to say well done to Watford, they came into the match with a clear game plan and completely outplayed us. I was talking in my Preview Blog about the pace that Watford possessed, and sure enough they completely did us with runs in behind the defence.
I was at the game today, it was just completely abject. The first goal, the wall pretty much disintegrated which left Bettinelli with absolutely no hope. I haven't see the Penalty "incident" from a "TV" angle yet, but from where I sit in H2 it looked like an obvious penalty- and Red Card. The only positive is that Bettinelli only has a one match ban. When we see the grey tracksuit bottoms on the pitch we know to run and hide. To be fair to him penalties are a lottery so the second one you can't really blame on him- I'm not even sure he'd warmed up prior to coming on, because he was running quite a bit around the box in the immediate aftermath of the second goal. I honestly have no idea what happened for the third, I know it was Deeney who scored it and I think he nutmegged Kiraly *sigh*. The 4th Goal was an absolute gem, I don't think anybody could have stopped it- and it pretty much summed up our performance in the game. I don't even want to talk about the fifth, lets just move on.
I thought Bettinelli was playing pretty well up to the Penalty incident, he made a good save from their first Free Kick in and around the box- but the Penalty Incident was just stupid. I've only seen the penalty incident once- live, but from what I can tell his touch that took it past Bettinelli also took it away from the goalmouth so it was perhaps unnecessary- but I could be wrong, and I have no intention of rewatching to find out. When Kiraly comes on I think we should play the Darth Vader walking music over the tannoy because whenever he's on the pitch we're done for. At this moment in time Kiraly's Fulham record reads like this;
Reading (3)
Forest (5)
Derby (5)
Watford (4)
I was going to write a paragraph questioning why the hell we'd sign him, then I remembered who signed him and it all made sense. For the Leeds game we almost have to default to Kiraly in goal unfortunately, we could go for an Emergency Loan- but I'm not sure if we should bring someone in literally for the sake of one game, as there is no way Bettinelli should be dropped because of one mistake. I'd like to see us give Magnus Norman a pop against Leeds, but thats just me.
This was by far and a way the worst defensive performance I've seen under Kit, and in terms of a full 90 Minutes probably our worst of the season. I'd said before the game the pace of the likes of Vydra and Anya- and what do ya know? We got completely done by the pace of the Watford team. Even before we went down to ten men we looked ridiculously stretched, In hindsight bringing Burn back in wasn't the best move. Hutchinson for all of his faults at least has a degree of agility, Burn got completely done by Vydra and Deeney- as did Bodurov, the number of times one of their players had a clear sight at goal was ridiculous. I didn't think Grimmer played atrociously, its hard to judge such a young player this early into his Fulham career. Stafylidis on the other hand was absolutely awful, I thought in terms of defensive displays he'd played alright against Huddersfield and I praised him for it- since then He played awful against Brentford and was at fault for the Jota winner, had an "alright" game against Brighton, and just forgot he was a footballer today.
I wouldn't have subbed Bryan when we needed to bring on Kiraly, it was pretty much a guarantee we'd be two goals behind by the time we were back in open play so I personally would've taken off Fofana, who's main attributes are defensive. For all of Bryans flaws he can influence a game and pick a pass, something we simply didn't look like doing all night- the endless long balls up to Hugo from either Bodurov or Burn was just stupid. I don't know if it was a damage limitation mentality that made us bring off Ruiz or we just thought it was best we had a "Full Blooded" player on the pitch who would chase the ball. We were completely outclassed in all aspects of the pitch- including midfield. The combination of LVC, Parker & Other has served us well in previous games, but nobody looked like they were awake tonight- including Christensen and Parker who have been two of our more committed players over the past few months. I'm just going to write it off as "one of those" games where everything that could have gone wrong did.
I thought given the limited service Hugo got he performed well. Especially once Ruiz went off we didn't really have a link between midfield and attack- and it was pretty much up to McCormack and Hugo to fashion chances on their own. Hugo could have perhaps scored in the second half, but in the grand scheme of things it wouldn't have made a difference.
I think this is a game where you just have to a draw a line under and move on. I'm not going to go crazy and demand the immediate sacking of Kit along with the sacrifice of his first born child. On the same notion, we can't completely ignore this game and the warning signs raised from it- perhaps on a positive we only have a handful of games until we can improve in January, and on the back of this game its become even more apparent that improvements are necessary.
Thanks as always for reading, I didn't feel that cold at the game today- at least in comparison the people around me, so at least I had that going for me today. As always any and all feedback is appreciated, I think its going to be a Netflix weekend.
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