Fulham head to Barnsley for another Saturday lunchtime kick off attempting to avoid all the talk about promotion being just around the corner for Marco Silva’s side. They ruthlessly exploited the sending of Swansea’s Ryan Manning to score five in the second half in south Wales on Tuesday and another outstanding away display widened their lead at the top of the Championship to fourteen points. The Fulham head coach has ignored the table for much of the season and reiterated in Thursday’s press conference that, despite feeling proud of his squad’s performances, nothing has been won just yet.
The Tykes, who made things tricky for a while at Craven Cottage earlier in the season, should head into this contest in good heart having put together their most successful run of what has been a dismal season. Poya Asbaghi’s side might still been five points behind Reading, but they can take plenty of positives after amassing ten points from their last six matches. It might have been more were it not for a heartbreaking Stoke City equaliser in midweek – and relegation certainly doesn’t appear the foregone conclusion it looked when the Swedish coach stepped into the hotseat at Oakwell.
Barnsley’s momentum has come from improved performances sparked by a collection of January arrivals, chief among them the former Fulham loanee Domingos Quina. The Portuguese midfielder’s short spell at Craven Cottage was devoid of memorable moments but the 21 year-old has already shown his class in Yorkshire with a long-range winner against QPR and a stunning strike that shocked Stoke on Tuesday night.
There won’t be a second Fulham reunion this weekend as former forward Cauley Woodrow remains sidelined following knee surgery. Asbaghi could include Aaron Leya Iseka among his substitutes and the Barnsley coach may be tempted to stick with the same eleven that almost beat Stoke last time out. Defender Callum Brittain has stressed the importance of the Tykes maintaining the intensity that characterised impressive recent showings against Stoke, Hull and Middlesbrough. Fulham will need to watch promising midfielder Callum Styles, who has grown through this campaign into a performer of real quality, with his reading of the game and excellent eye for a pass likely to represent a real threat.
Silva spoke this week of his reticence to rotate away from a winning formula for the sake of it. His unchanged side did the business at Swansea after a slow start and that may mean that Tom Cairney will remain on the bench having returned to first-team action as a late substitute in Wales on Tuesday. Harrison Reed roamed across the pitch with real effect in midweek, setting up a couple of goals, and his partnership with Jean Michael Seri illustrates the competition for places within the Whites midfield.
Asbaghi told the press that he has not devised a particular plan to deal with Aleksandar Mitrovic – maybe because many of the division have found such efforts to be utterly useless. Teams have gone man to man on Mitrovic and Fabio Carvalho in recent months aiming to neuter the effectiveness of two of Fulham’s key players, but that has only served to offer more space to the dangerous wide pair of Harry Wilson and Neeskens Kebano. Fulham’s forward line needs careful handling but Silva’s penchant for attacking football means that offensive threats appear from anywhere – witness Neco Williams’ brilliant brace as time ticked down in midweek.
Both Silva and Cairney stressed in separate pre-match interviews that they expect Barnsley to make things very difficult for Fulham from the outset, as befitting a side scrapping for their lives. It will be another opportunity for the Whites to emphasise their Premier League credentials with the possibility of promotion back to the top flight beginning to loom large with such a sizeable lead at the top of the Championship table. You can be absolutely certain that Silva, loathe to count any chickens, won’t tolerate any complacency from his charges, however.
MY FULHAM XI (4-2-3-1): Rodak; Williams, A. Robinson, Adarabioyo, Ream; Reed, Seri; Wilson, Kebano, Carvalho, Mitrovic. Subs: Gazzaniga, Tete, Hector, Chalobah, Cairney, Decordova-Reid, Muniz.
