The middle of the line

It had to come some time. Fulham have now lost a competitive game in the 2010-11 season. And not by fielding a reserve team in the League Cup. No, the first team were out, with Gera starting instead of Duff and the rest as per the last Premiership match.

The last time Fulham went to Stoke it was a mid-week game in January, on a day when most fixtures were cancelled from the snow but the Whites went out to lose 3-2 and Zamora took a bad knock to his shoulder. And that started a really bad run for Fulham.

Hopefully this is just a glitch, and the team will learn from this for the Premiership games. We’ll just have to save our cup form for the FA.

Good on Brentford for knocking Everton out though!

EDIT: when I wrote this, I hadn’t seen that Dembélé was stretchered off after a bad tackle – Stoke have a habit of crocking our players, don’t they? He’s off for two weeks, which leaves Fulham short up front. Not only is Zamora out until next year, but Andy Johnson is still a few weeks away from being able to play. Gera and Dempsey need to step up for the next few games.

Last season, Fulham went out of the League Cup in the second round (the first game for most Premiership sides), having put out a team mainly of second-stringers against a full strength Man City at Eastlands. Understandably, with a game the previous week in Sofia and ahead of the visits of Arsenal and FC Basel, Hodgson was not going to risk tiring out the first team in such a game.

But this season there are no European distractions, and we know that we have a squad capable of a good cup run, so it was heartening to see the first team out last night. Read the rest of this entry »