Cottage POV

Well, it looked promising for a period but a deserved loss for Fulham against Champions League side Aston Villa who displayed the levels required to become a European side. Unai Emery, mocked at Arsenal, has always been a terrific tactical coach and won his 4th in a row against Marco Silva since his appointment at Aston Villa.

Fulham will wonder what if after Andreas Pereira’s putrid penalty was saved by Emi Martinez to keep the scores level about 15 minutes after Morgan Rogers’ shot deflected off Calvin Bassey to equalise for our visitors. After the opening periods, Fulham were largely on the back foot on a pretty horrible day individually and as a team; though credit to Raul Jimenez who applied himself creditably throughout, I will also give a small doff of the cap to Alex Iwobi who was another who plugged away in a difficult game.

Aston Villa found gaps in between Fulham’s midfield that has yet to be breached to this level in Marco Silva’s new 433 set up with Andreas Pereira and Emile Smith Rowe either side of a base midfielder. Villa’s opener came courtesy of Jacob Ramsey collecting the ball freely on the half way line; he’s never really contested but manages to take Sander Berge out of the game with a line breaking pass into Morgan Rogers who similarly had the freedom of SW6 to turn beautifully, stride towards our back four, take a couple more touches and take the shot that deflected its way past Bernd Leno. Midfield breaking passes and overloads (particularly v Kenny Tete) were our enemy all afternoon with Youri Tielemans, my personal man of the match, having full control of Craven Cottage. Take a look at the Villa third, the aforementioned Tielemans threads a beauty past Sander Berge and Reiss Nelson into Morgan Rogers, whose first touch has him charging against our back four once more. He floats left to create a 3v1 overload against Kenny Tete, popping off to Jacob Ramsey who in turn lays off to Lucas Digne; his first time cross is turned into his own goal by Issa Diop.

Villa’s personnel and tactical preferences are a particular kryptonite to Fulham, they possess immense athleticism and physical presence, but excellent technical ability and execute Emery’s ideas to perfection. Not sure whether any Villa fans will read this but they were the best side we’ve played this season and the best away crowd of the four we’ve welcomed to Craven Cottage so far this season. Sadly for any Villa fans here, this is where I’ll stop applauding the visitors and talk about little old Fulham. I do wonder how today will affect teams who play us this season, whilst its not the first time we’ve dropped points this season, it is the first time I’ve felt like we’ve been “done.” The big question of our midfield make up since switching from a more standard 4231 to a 433 is the increased vulnerability placed on the deepest midfielder with Andreas Pereira and Emile Smith Rowe more like dual 10s and helping to create numbers in around the box. There’s only so much ground Sander Berge (or Sasa Lukic) can cover and it can lead to situations where Youri Tielemans can rock up and ping it through your midfield with relative ease when they have players like Jacob Ramsey, Morgan Rogers and Leon Bailey floating ready to collect the ball in those spaces and face our back four.

Fulham are a balanced football teams and can play in a number of different ways, valuing the transition but also want to have control of the field of the play. We saw aspects of promising transitional play today but the ability to control periods of possession and dictate the opposition needs some work the develop this next genre of Fulham under Marco Silva. Bad days at the office don’t help, the midfield trio were all substandard, I thought it was a pretty horrible afternoon for Emile Smith Rowe whilst Andreas Pereira was actively damaging, not just with the missed penalty but substandard passing and providing no ability to progress play into the forward areas. I’ll be kinder to Sander Berge than it appears many are prepared to be given his first true start in the system with City away being a very different tactical question. Developing stronger relationships with his team mates comes with game time whilst training as the starter will help. I’ve seen many a Fulham player start poorly, have the crowd on their back and turn into a hero (Sasa Lukic, Stefan Johansen and Chris Baird just off the top of my head), I will bide my time with new signings.

The most concerning thing to come out of Saturday is Joachim Andersen’s three game suspension. This sees our Danish centre half now miss a trip to Goodison Park to play Everton, a Monday Night Football derby against Brentford and a trip across London to play his former side Crystal Palace. The slate of three games just became a lot more daunting, particularly given all three value set pieces and play a more direct style of play. That and our distribution from the back just got a whole lot more questionable and our opposition slate will be salivating at the timing of playing us without both Andersen and Sasa Lukic. “Competition breeds excellence” and its time for Fulham to show with Issa Diop and Sander Berge to beat their competition and match the predecessors levels whilst the starting eleven is feeling “set” we may be in need of a couple challenging to help freshen things up going into this run of games.

All in all, a bad day at the office. Not much to cheer about and plenty for Marco Silva and his coaching staff to chew on in the week leading to Saturday Night Football on Sky Sports in Fulham’s last trip (FA Cup draws pending) to Goodison Park before the Toffees move to their new stadium. Whilst Marco Silva has a poor record against Unai Emery’s Aston Villa, he is unbeaten in five as Fulham coach against Everton with two league wins on the bounce away from home as well as a draw being converted into progress in the EFL Cup with legendary night on pens.

Onwards and upwards.