Cottage POV

Whilst we’re still reeling off of a pretty shocking defeat at the hands of Wolves, I wanted to use the early part of the week for a little positivity and look for Fulham’s opportunities for victory at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Spurs had a completely differing Saturday afternoon with a stunning 4-0 win at the Etihad dooming Pep Guardiola’s to 5 losses in a row in all competitions.

Tottenham were very good value for that victory with one of the players of the season in Dejan Kulusevski lightning up the Etihad. Spurs in their last 6 matches have 2 wins over Manchester City with a win against Aston Villa whilst losing to Crystal Palace, Galatasaray and Ipswich, a 3-0-3 record paints the Jekyll and Hyde we’ve seen out of Tottenham this season. Fulham can also take confidence from a 3-0 win over our hosts last season with prime Rodrigo Muniz’s brace sandwiching Sasa Lukic’s one and only goal for Fulham to date.

I hate to present it as “good news” but more fortunately for Fulham, Tottenham’s goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario fractured his ankle at City, making his clean sheet even more remarkable. We’ll talk about his replacement later but Vicario was a key signing for Ange Postecoglu early on, his first signing in charge as Spurs looked to move on from Hugo Lloris. Vicario tops the league for short passes completed by goalkeepers in the Premier League displaying the importance he has in Ange’s build up play which is second only to City for percentage of possession and shots per game.

Replacing Guglielmo Vicario is former England international Fraser Forster who looks every bit of his 36 years old. His massive frame takes a little longer to get down and whilst he’s a capable backup keeper for Tottenham, it is an opportunity for an increase in Fulham’s potential conversion rate. This is about to be Forster’s 5th game since the start of 23/24 with the first of his previous 5 being at Craven Cottage in the Carabao Cup. So a large decrease in goalkeeping quality both shot stopping and distribution will be an interesting narrative to follow across the fixture.

Players missing could be on Fulham’s side with Micky van de Ven expected to be out until mid-December though he is back in training, we’re still too early for any real team news. Cristian Romero was deemed to be hopeful to return for this weekend whilst Rodrigo Bentancur will continue his suspension for his pre-season racial slur referencing Heung-Min Son.

The key factor for Fulham will likely be Micky van de Ven with a potentially similar set up to our own fixture away at Manchester City where Adama Traore was a monster on the transition. Spurs are frequently seen in a high line and van de Ven and Vicario are the insurances with elite recovery speed and aggressive sweeper keeping. Fulham’s set up will be interesting to watch coming off an awful display. A reminder that at the Etihad, Marco Silva employed more of a 541 with Alex Iwobi operating as a right wing back, Adama wide left with Sasa Lukic and Sander Berge in midfield. Whilst the result wasn’t ideal, the performance was excellent and was probably foreshadowing the potential of City’s run of losses.

Since that loss at City, Fulham have seen Reiss Nelson force his way into the starting eleven plus Emile Smith Rowe and Sander Berge have had their levels increase with more frequent football and adjustments to the system providing a couple more options for Marco Silva to line up with.

So Fulham are coming off of a pretty turgid performance at Craven Cottage on Saturday but we know Fulham’s standards are much higher than that and Marco Silva and staff has displayed performances like that aren’t frequent occurrences. No doubt about it, Tottenham have quality and cause problems but Fulham will too. Fulham will have opportunities to take points from this game, lets see how it plays out on Sunday.