Opposition report: Fulham (A)

Can the Blades make their mark in their latest London away day?

Sam Parry

I’m writing this a 05:45 in the morning, so forgive any grumpiness.

I am grumpy. After last weekend’s defeat to West Ham, I was surprised at the number and ferocity of the Paul Heckingbottom naysayers. I know Twitter is a bubble, unrepresentative of all the views. However, there were a lot of views shared and many of them, I think, weren’t pretty.

Whatever you think about the manager’s performance this season, I’m not sure it’s fair to judge him without the context of a summer where we sold our best player (Ndiaye) and one of our best players (Berge). I don’t think it’s fair to judge him on the performance of signings (particularly Hamer, Souza, McAtee) who played no pre-season because they were bought so late. And when you piece those two factors together and remind yourself that Heckingbottom got the very best out of his team last year, I don’t think it’s fair to call for his head when Sheffield United Football Club are operating with a poorer team in a higher league. Put simply: if we’re not good enough to stay up, then it’s down to a regression in on-the-pitch quality first.

I’m not naive to the reality that it’s always the manager’s fault because that’s the way of things in modern football. I’m not wedded to Heckingbottom to such an extent that I think it’s right or proper for him to stay in his job if loss follows loss because that’s a vicious cycle. We need to show fight, even if we accept the fate of a team nowhere near good enough for the level. But we have shown fight, haven’t we? No serious person watching the games versus Man City and Spurs can say we didn’t. And for that reason, I have some confidence going into the Fulham game.

Turning point or point of no return?

Be it injury or the general state of play, this weekend's fixture at Fulham marks a point of change for Sheffield United. A win, or at the very least a point and a performance, is vital. Lose to a Fulham team who I perceive to be a bottom-five side, and the negativity will only increase. We have to play better, and Heckingbottom has to make changes. Because the longer we occupy the foot of the table, and the longer the spell of poor performances, the more likely it becomes that the relegation torpor sets in. Hecky now has to deliver more and better, and that’s no easy task.

Was it better against West Ham? I'm not so sure. No, it wasn't an 8-0 embarassment. Although a 2-0 defeat is hardly laudable. In fact, there was something more depressing about the loss as it showed little signs of a team sparking into life. Where before we had clung on and fought, we looked desperately lacking in calmness, fluency and ideas. 

Many will disagree with me, but I put much of that down to a lack of Norwood. Fans seem to pick on him as the player we need to move beyond. The problem with that view is that we no longer have Berge or Doyle to slot into something resembling his position. And that means that when Norwood is out of the team, we struggle in build-up, in cutting off the passing lines of good attacking teams, and in hitting Oli McBurnie. Many seem to think Souza has been a credible answer to the Norwood problem. He really hasn't. No doubt there’s a player in there, and one that will get better. But his strengths are not Norwood’s strengths and we can’t pretend otherwise.

There’s a hefty and growing injury list: Baldock, Norrington-Davies, Osborn, Lowe, Fleck, Jebbison, Osula, and now John Egan. Egan’s absence will necessitate a tactical tweak, and perhaps not a simple one. Add to that Paul Heckingbottom’s comments that there are one or two injury problems for unnamed players, and it makes a line-up prediction tricky.

But Heckingbottom described this game as an opportunity for those who haven’t been playing. When he says that, I intuit Trusty, Norwood, Davies and maybe Basham. Who out of those might start? We could see Trusty at left-wing back, a position he played last season for Birmingham despite being more of a traditional centre-back. I think he’ll start at LWB after Thomas struggled against West Ham. And given that Ahmedodzic has looked better in the centre of a back three, I think he’ll drop into Egan’s position and that means Basham has to start at RCB. Bogle has to start, so there’s your back five. I think Norwood comes back in for McAtee, which brings better build-up and also gives us the opportunity to bring on an attacking sub later in the game. And I think that’s probably it.

But what of the opposition? Let’s see what Riley has to say.

Riley Roberts

I mean no disrespect to Fulham when I say this, but if we want to be taken seriously at this level, these are the games where we simply must get a result. The Cottagers come into this one in a steady 13th place. They have 2 wins to their name, however, I think this could be seen as somewhat of a false position. 

I know some people object to the use of “xG nonsense”, but Fulham have only had more expected goals than their opponent in one game this season, and even then it was by a narrow margin in a dull game (0.6 xG v 0.3 xG against Crystal Palace). In their two 1-0 victories over fellow strugglers Everton and Luton, they conceded a whopping 3.8 xG, meaning it was a minor miracle that they managed to keep a clean sheet in either, never mind both games.

Against Everton, Bernd Leno made a slew of incredible saves to deny Neal Maupay and Abdoulaye Doucoure. And against Luton, he made one fine stop from Amari’i Bell, while Jacob Brown had an effort come off the woodwork. Using a goals-prevented metric that is determined by the quality and position of a shot, Leno ranks 4th out of all PL keepers this season. Put simply: he’s saved Fulham 2.5 goals they would’ve conceded with the average goalkeeper. Over the course of last season, Leno ranked 2nd in this metric for all keepers in the top 5 European leagues. Preventing an absurd 9 more goals than he would’ve been expected to.

Conceding a lot of chances isn’t the only area where Fulham have struggled. Joint with us and Bournemouth, they have scored the least goals in the league this season with 5 and they are the only team in the league which hasn’t had a player score more than once so far.

Obviously, it was quite big news in the summer when Aleksandar Mitrovic departed the club. In his last 68 league games for Fulham, he scored 57 goals, including 14 in 24 last season. He was always going to be hard to replace but summer signing Raul Jimenez is really, really struggling to get firing, and it’s not as if he’s even getting chances. Jimenez is currently accumulating xG at a rate of just 0.12 per 90 minutes, putting him in the bottom 5% of all Premier League strikers meaning he is on track to score around 2/3 goals this season, not quite the 14 Mitrovic offered.

Fulham might’ve had a good campaign last season, but I always predicted them to have a tough time this time around. Their underlying numbers last season weren’t good, and they benefited way too heavily on individual brilliance at both ends of the pitch for it to be sustainable in my opinion. I have mentioned Leno and Mitrovic, but Joao Palhinha was another who had a brilliant season for them last season. The defensive midfielder is one of the best in the world when it comes to breaking up play in the middle of the park but even he seemed to have had his head turned by summer interest from Bayern Munich: the footage of a dejected Palhinha trudging through the airport upon finding out his move had collapsed went viral in the footballing world.

All in all, we’re facing a team who are in trouble just like ourselves. In fact, alongside us, they are the only other team to be in the bottom 3 for both xG and xG conceded showing that they have not had a good start. They will see this as a good opportunity to put things right. We need to see it as a chance to put them in real peril whilst picking ourselves up off the canvas.

Sam Parry

Usually, Riley’s bit dampens my optimism with the cold, hard analysis that has, so far, proven pretty much correct ahead of every game. But this time… well, I feel more optimistic.

Fulham aren’t a great side. They may be better than us player-for-player. But they’re also on the cusp of a downward slide and we need to make that happen. Our motivation, ahead of an International Break, should be huge. It may be hard to quantify the relationship between motivation and result, but there’s something nagging away at me that makes me think we’ll have an edge.

Part of it is that it feels make-or-break. Part of it is that Fulham are not Spurs, Newcastle, or West Ham. Part of it is sheer, dumb excitement at another London away day and the possibility of another Hamer-Spurs moment… without the 12 minutes of added time.

Let’s go: Fulham 0-1 Sheffield United (Trusty)