Cardiff v Fulham Preview: Here We Go Again

Hello! It's that time of year again, guys. We've had three or so months to recuperate after the abomination that was last season- and now we're all back on the Fulham Rollercoaster, and we just have to pray there's more ups than downs. I was going to do somewhat of a Pre-Season Review and looking at the team I'd be playing throughout the season, I had it written and ready to go up last Sunday but then I realised that'd pretty much make this post a moot point so this post will be a weird hybrid of a Season Preview/Predictions and a Preview for tomorrow.

I suppose the "big" albeit not surprising news that's come out this week is the Mitroglou Loan, where by seeing a few tweets here and there yesterday I can see everyone's reacted to it rationally and logically. Yes, the Palace game was nice- and seeing Mitroglou appear was a nice tick off of my Bucket List but there was no chance he was going to play in the Championship, it was just a fact. If anything the Palace game highlighted that fact, he's simply too good to be at the level we as a Club currently find ourselves at. 

The other bits of news that have come out today are the Squad Numbers and the Sponsor Announcement. I don't think anyone was surprised when we revealed VisitFlorida as our sponsor- in fact it was possibly the worst kept secret in god knows how many years- I know some people do get hung up on the aesthetics of the kit, but to me it's a non-issue as long as the players in the kit are winning. The squad numbers are interesting to a point, the #5 and #7 spots being left open I think people are reading too much into. We're trying to get rid of Amorebieta- and he's the only obvious candidate to be the #5 at present and the same can be said for the #7- as I'll discuss later on hopefully there'll be new players in those shirts soon enough, but I do think people may be looking into it a bit too much on that front. Bettinelli's ended up with the #1 Shirt I suppose is the main other talking point out of the squad numbers, while Squad Numbers are never a guarantee that a player will leave it is interesting to a point that he's gotten the #1 shirt and hopefully that'll at least slow down the rumours of the Bettinelli exit where people really jumped the gun.

One thing I did find slightly hilarious coming out of the Palace game was the fact everyone immediately jumped to conclusions once Bettinelli wasn't in either team. This Summer is as much of a proof as any that someone missing a Pre-Season game doesn't automatically mean a transfer somewhere else see Dunk (more later), McDonald and more. I'm willing to take the Bettinelli injury at face value for now, but as discussed in my Transfers post a few weeks back it's by no means an impossibility that Bettinelli does go- as discussed/hinted at in Kit's Press Conference yesterday when he spoke about the Contracts of people like Bettinelli, Hyndman etc.

Moving onto the game tomorrow and without knowing for definite, I think it's reasonably safe to assume that Lonergan's going to start tomorrow. I'm willing to attribute Lonergan's horrendous distribution against Palace to nerves and move on, although that wasn't helped by the fact he was lumping it up to Woodrow most of the time. Aside from the distribution I thought Lonergan looked reasonably good as he has done for the majority of Pre-Season and let's face it, he's a better alternative to Bettinelli than Kiraly was. 

It's amazing what a few weeks of nothing going on and an injury will do for the confidence levels. At the time I wrote the Transfers thing we were a few weeks out from the start of the season and we'd just signed Luke Garbutt on Loan and I was pretty happy. We'd just signed Dunk for the 7th time this Summer and things were looking up from a defensive standpoint, now it's all gone horrible wrong. We still haven't signed a Centre-Back, Dunk or otherwise and we're headed to Cardiff with a worse Back Five than the one we had at the end of last season- and it isn't even close. The Centre-Backs are where the major problem lies (I know that may shock some of you), and there isn't really a "right" pairing with the Centre-Backs we currently have.

I don't rate Dan Burn at all, I'll preface what I'm about to say with that- but given the way Cardiff are likely to set-up we can't not have someone as physically imposing in the team like Burn. The Burn/Hutchinson partnership scared the life out of me against Palace as such I'd go for Bodurov next to him. I'm not going to get into the debate over which Centre-Back is superior to the other- can we all just agree they're all awful and move on? With Garbutt's injury we're left in an awkward position and while it's far from ideal I think we should shift Jazz Richards to Left-Back and bring in Grimmer at Right-Back, it's basically a choice of Grimmer or Voser/Kavanagh and I know who I rate more.

EDIT: Turns out Grimmer's ill so that's that plan out of the window and we'll have Voser/Kavanagh. Everyone contain your excitement. 

I saw a thing yesterday where I don't know if Brighton were doing a Q&A with their Chairman or whatever and of course Dunk came up and the Chairman basically said he'd sell Dunk for the right price. The fact we haven't even had a whiff of another Centre-Back being linked with us suggests to me that we've put all of our Eggs in one basket when it comes to Dunk and at this stage of the window I think we're just going to put up the money to sign him even if it's way, way too much. The fact is everyone knows we need a Centre-Back desperately, and the closer to the Deadline that we get the higher the price will be so we might as well just cough up- and hopefully before Brighton next weekend where Zamora's guaranteed to score as it is. 

The Midfield is strange, it's by far and a way our strongest area out of three- but we're still lacking in it to an extent. The recent news is the signing of Mattila, while it's not a signing that'll set the world alight we paid a really small fee for him and I'm not going to make a judgement on him until I've actually seen him play- which without knowing I'd guess would be against Wycombe and not tomorrow. Moving onto who will be on the pitch- I'm working under the assumption that we're going to play a 4-4-2/4-4-1-1 even though I'd prefer for us to go with a 4-3-3. With that in mind and much to my chagrin the Midfield pretty much picks itself, and unfortunately that also means Tom Cairney will be on the Right. 

The Palace game pretty much confirmed what I'd already thought in that Cairney is just wasted out on the Right-Hand side, but the problem is we don't have a proper alternative. I'd thought about Kacaniklic because he's looked pretty good in Pre-Season as well, but he's wasted out on the right as well so I'm not really sure what we're going to do. From what we saw from O'Hara against Palace and Pre-Season in general he's probably one of the first names on the team sheet for tomorrow. I didn't see him every week at Wolves/Blackpool but he looked hugely motivated to me against Palace and I think he knows we're his last shot at a "good" club. Another way to put Kacaniklic in the team would be to have Pringle move centrally, but I can't see that as it would mean leaving Christensen out- as such the Midfield is pretty straightforward. 

The Strikers are weird at the moment. I think it's pretty safe to say that McCormack is the first name on the team sheet, but we're in this weird situation where we need an out and out Striker to be playing up-front with McCormack who'll be in a #10 sort of role. Burn, Hutchinson and Woodrow were the only people who looked completely out of place against Palace, and we simply can't rely on Woodrow to perform. I'd like to think and I would assume that we played Woodrow against Palace and had Smith at Colchester for the sole reason that we know what Smith offers to the team, and at least for me Woodrow is still somewhat of an unknown quantity. Smith is my choice without a doubt, that's not necessarily an endorsement of Smith though- and if we do bring a Striker in I can see Smith going elsewhere by September. 

Speaking of bringing a Striker in, along with Mitroglou going out- we've been linked with Dwight Gayle coming in. It now looks like Gayle's likely destination is Boro after we had all but signed him a few days ago (sound familar). I think it goes without saying that Gayle would be a quality signing were we to get him, but that just doesn't seem likely now and we should move on quickly because there are other options out there- just off the top of my head I'd assume Gary Hooper's available. I think the Gayle stuff is all dependant on whether Boro can get Rhodes, so let's just cut the middle-man out and get Rhodes eh?

Team for Cardiff...

EDIT: 

We're definitely in a better overall state than we were this time last year, I don't think that's in doubt- however I still think we're in for a pretty dodgy season all in all. I think we're going to have a really rough August, leading to a few panic buys before the Window shuts and we'll eventually stabilise getting to high Mid-Table with the ambitions of Playoffs- but then around March/April time we'll completely go off the rails and settle at around 10th-14th. I don't know what I'd deem a successful season to be honest, I guess I'll know it when I see it. However starting the season with the defence we have is basically starting the race with one leg- and we can't have any serious ambition until that's fixed as an absolutely bare minimum.

Tomorrow's game is a weird one, I think with the current state we're in we're possibly the best value for money bet when it comes to Over/Under Goals. With the way we've gone about our business this window I think we'll definitely create scoring opportunities, and at least in the immediate future the only real way we can try and win a game is to outscore them- because with the defence we're going to line up with a Clean Sheet is a near impossibility. 

Thanks for reading as always, these Fulham posts are back in full flow now all the way between now and next May. As always opinions/feedback are appreciated- and especially at this stage of the season without a defined team there's sure to be a lot of differing ones. As always the Reviews will be up tomorrow, if you're new here this season I aim to get the Weekend Game Reviews up at 8pm and the Midweeks at Midnight so keep an eye out for all of those. Thanks again for reading, and let's just think positive- at least until about 2pm tomorrow.