I’ve watched Fulham a fair bit over the last couple of seasons live.

Fair to say Silva has a set way of playing but within that gives players a fair amount of freedom to attack.

When the don’t have the ball they have a fairly solid shape, play a midfield block and are hard to play though - I suspect we may have looked at that and analysed it given the size and type of players we bought this summer.

If they win the ball then in transition they look to get forward and wide very quickly and will try and get an overload with the FB bombing forwards, they are quite happy to hit long balls often on the diagonal and look to get in behind.

When they have normal possession they look to open teams up but are fairly disciplined in resetting the pattern of play and giving it back to the CB or DM.

Left side likely to be a challenge for us as Robinson, Iwobe and King all fairly quick and skilful and quite comfortable getting the ball in tight spaces. Again, will often try and get the full back in behind or mix it up and try and get Ling though on the inside.

When it doesn’t work can look very robotic with the resets to the CB.

If the are being attacked and win the ball then they can look v v good on the counter.


Should be a good test for us as to how far we have come as they are certainly no mugs and have dangerous players up front.