After last week’s disaster at home to Hull, it’s imperative that Scott Parker and his team get a result away to Birmingham tomorrow. With the rumblings surrounding Parker’s position, we are past the stage were he can get away with the team putting in a decent performance. He needs all three points tomorrow.
You can describe Birmingham’s season as being inconsistent. Seven wins, which is one more than Fulham have, go alongside seven defeats and a draw leaving them down in 12th. We are just one point better off than them in 8th, highlighting once again just how tight this Championship season is. They are in pretty good form with nine points out of the last 15 available, but they did lose last time out to Cardiff City.
Goals have been reasonably hard to come by for Birmingham with only 16 scored and with top scorer Lukas Jutkiewicz having just scored four. They’ll be facing us without captain Harlee Dean after he was sent off against Cardiff last weekend. Outside Dean and Jutkiewicz, a lot of the Birmingham squad are relatively unknown but we should be aware of 16 year-old Jude Bellington. We know only too well how exciting it is when you can include a youngster who has come through the youth system at a club. He may be just 16, but that doesn’t mean that he should be underestimated. He’s scored two goals from midfield this season and looks to be a real prospect.
For Fulham we will be missing Joe Bryan after he picked up an injury last weekend. Parker will have the same old question about who to start in goal with Marek Rodak available again after his one game ban for his red card two weeks ago. Bettinelli didn’t cover himself in glory up against Hull last weekend, but I’d be surprised if he didn’t get the nod ahead of Rodak. In the matches were Rodak has been included he hasn’t done anything for me to suggest that he is the stronger option. It’s an area that needs addressed in January, but maybe for now we stick with Betts.
Despite the fact that we have the league’s current top goal scorer in Aleksander Mitrovic, we haven’t managed to score in 3 of the past four games. We need to take advantage of the fact that Birmingham are without their main leader tomorrow and rattle them early on. The good news is that we haven’t went three Championship games without scoring since January 2015. We don’t have a great record against Birmingham though, with four losses in the past six meetings.
History and form aside, this is a must-win game for Fulham. We have dropped far too many points already this season, and the only reason we are still within touching distance of the top too is because no-one in this league seems to want to run away with it. It is still incredibly close, but soon the gap will be too hard to pull back. We are getting to the stage were Parker’s job is on the line. Hopefully he has enough in his locker to get him through this.
#COYW
Very fair assessment Lydia, especially the point about is still being in touch with the leaders. This is in itself quite surprising , given our results lately. So it is all about what happens next. I am a fan of Scott and his pretty football but maybe the other teams have figured us out. They always seem to have a game plan against us, whereas we use much the same strategy against everyone. To be fair it worked for Jokanivic at this level, but only after Mitro came in January. It is always frustrating to be a Fulham fan. Maybe , just maybe….