There’s been a lot of uproar over Fulham’s spectacular failings on transfer deadline day to fail to add competently to the squad – despite signing a genuine world class forward, a versatile and proven Englishman and a rated winger. No doubt this is a reaction to losing our two best players in Dembele and Dempsey, and although the club would have been doing their best, and we have some of the best working for us, I too am disappointed in our failure to replace Dembele, at least, in the centre of midfield.
But our squad is still impressive. Take the first and second choice 11s (I’ll choose to deploy the 4-2-3-1 that Jol seems to favour, although I feel that may change in order to optimise the talents at our disposal):
Schwarzer
Riether – Hughes – Hangeland – Riise
Diarra – Sidwell
Dejegah – Ruiz – Richardson
Berbatov
vs
Stockdale
Kelly – Senderos – Baird – Briggs
Kasami – ?X?
Duff – Rodallega – Kacaniklic
Petric
We also have Davies, Trotta and Frei to help supplement the squad, and talented young players in Mesca, Minkwitz and Burn who are not far from the first team either.So you see, it’s actually fairly deep, especially with our attacking options and our defensive positions are well stocked too. You also cannot understate the quality of Petric and Berbatov either, we should be very excited that they’re here.
There is one big concern in the centre of midfield. We now rely a lot on Diarra keeping his fitness, an attribute that he’s not been too consistent with over the last few years, and there’s some doubt as to the quality of Sidwell; personally I think Sidwell is ok, and adequate enough to carry us over until January, but clearly we will miss the guile we used to have in that position provided by Dembele and Murphy before him. Not just that but our variety there is limited, so it will be difficult to change games with substitutions in that area, but as I say the problem there really isn’t as bad as it’s made out and elsewhere we should be fine, until January at least where we will no doubt be active in the transfer market with hopefully a bit more gusto than we demonstrated over the past two weeks.
~lork
Thought Jol would bring in a in a Central Midfielder. After West Ham Game we need a good one!!! Was 1st game after deadline so i give the boys that but EVERYONE vs West Ham went missing!!!!! Need to put game behind and look at video got dominated by ham, what!!!!! We are better then that. Diarra and Sidwell are acceptable but need another asap for depth or we have to wait till Jan Transfer.
I could see us moving Petric into a central midfield position. He is such a clever player and used to be an attacking midfielder. He might thrive in the central midfield role.
Otherwise I’ll give Chris Baird a shot as he has impressed me when filling in for Danny Murphy. His distribution is actually very good and he is more than capable of doing a decent job in the position.
thomas hitzlsperger would be a perfect fit for us, i hope jol can see that
Problem is that Schwartzer no longer dominates his area like he used to. There is beginning to be a question mark over our central defenders and we are certainly lacking apart from Diarra in defensive midfield. It remains to be seen how Ruiz and Frei get on in the Dembele role. Creativity in midfield was painful at West Ham. Have to reserve judgement on Dejega. Also a bit early to judge Richardson and Rodallega but on one occasion in the second half Rodallega broke clear in central midfield and started to run towards the left edge of the penalty area and then immediately lost the ball. Now if that had been Dembele…
We need a quality defensive midfielder, central defender and a playmaker as early as possible in January. Also it’s time to give Stockdale a run.
Owen Hargreaves? Why not?
Add Karagounis to that CM mix and I’ll feel a lot better about depth, set pieces, and ensuring that our forwards get the volume of service they need and deserve.