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Reflections on Fulham

By mac14 on August 24, 2008

Look familiar? It should. It's just our "captain" getting beat... AGAIN!

What can I say? It was a highly disappointing result regardless of our injury situation. However, this result has made our deficiencies clear for all to see. And they are the same deficiencies we’ve all been talking about since July – central defense and defensive midfield.

To begin with the midfield, it is clear that neither Denilson nor Eboue are true first XI candidates in the center of midfield. We lacked creativity and possession in midfield but that is what happens when you play a right back there. I would have liked to have seen Wenger move Nasri into the middle, put Eboue out wide right and swap Theo out to the left. However, instead of pulling Eboue or Denilson, who had an absolute nightmare of a match with passing that would make me question his place in a reserve side, the Boss chose to take Walcott off for Bendtner and move van Persie deeper. To be fair to Denilson, it was a bad day at the office for a lot of the team and he turned in good performances throughout the preseason but he is not ready at this moment to assume regular first XI duties. A signing for defensive midfield is absolutely imperative… I know it, you know it, and Wenger knows it.

As for central defense, it was like deja vu all over again; a repeat of March and April. Gallas is consistently weak on set pieces and yesterday we paid the price. On a day when you have an away derby and things just aren’t clicking offensively against an inspired (at least for them) home side you need to come away with at least a draw. At some point, you have to not only question his ability to be “captain” but also his ability to retain a place in the starting XI. Not only did his pathetic excuse for marking cost us the point but a second error almost gifted Fulham a 2-nil lead. Toure isn’t that much better in the air than Gallas but he rarely costs us points due to errors or weak marking.

Now, United dropped points last weekend at home to Newcastle and Fulham are a much improved side from the one we beat 3-nil at the Cottage last season but these are points that we have just gifted away to Chelsea and United. They say you can’t lose the title in September, but, in actual fact, you can… you just don’t know it until May.