The real tests will come against the better teams and while I still don’t think we’re up to those tests yet it’s very important we take as many points as possible against everyone else. We’re through to the last 16 of the Carabao Cup and looking very healthy in our Europa League group too. Most importantly we have won five Premier League games in a row after losing our opening two games against City and Chelsea.
After we lost those games I said we needed to get some points on the board quickly with a run of eight winnable games in a row before we face Liverpool. I hoped for 20 points from those games and Unai Emery has already delivered 15 with three games to go. We have the opportunity at Fulham today to make up more ground on some of the teams above us with Liverpool playing City. A win for us would see us close to within one point of whoever loses that game or to within two points of the league leaders if it’s a draw.
Fatigue shouldn’t be a factor after the long trip back from the 3-0 win away to Qarabag in the Europa League on Thursday night. Most of that side won’t start tomorrow except for Bernd Leno and Nacho Monreal and the possibility of Rob Holding, Sokratis Papastathopoulos and Alex Iwobi. The players who came off the bench should all start too, but their game time on Thursday night should mean they are OK. I said before that game that I think Holding might be doing enough to keep his place and I wouldn’t be surprised if he started today. If Holding does keep his place I would prefer to see Sokratis alongside him with Shkodran Mustafi on the bench.
Iwobi is another player who is really pushing for a regular first team place and seems to be blossoming under the new manager. If he is to keep his place it would mean one of our high profile players missing out with Aaron Ramsey the most likely candidate. Of course if Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang doesn’t recover from his knock it opens the way for either Iwobi or Henrikh Mkhitaryan to play.
Aubameyang has been pushed out to a wide role because of the form of Alexandre Lacazette and as frustrating as it might be to see our record signing striker played wide it’s hard to argue with the decision. I would still like to see Aubameyang through the middle on occasion and particularly away to teams who will put us on the back foot, but give us opportunities on the break. His explosive pace is something we haven’t got to see too often, but hopefully we will see it in some crucial games.
Fulham haven’t had the greatest start to their return to the Premier League and they need to get a few more points on the board quite quickly. If we think our defensive record is poor then theirs is an awful lot worse and it’s something we can take advantage of today. We have become rather good at taking our chances when the opposition don’t and emerging with wins despite our opponents having just as many good scoring chances as us.
While that statistic won’t hold up forever and the better teams will punish us for poor defending we are profiting from having good finishers in our team. Fulham have a very good finisher at the moment in Aleksandar Mitrovic and we could be in trouble if he is presented with the sort of chances others have missed against us recently. Even if Mitrovic does his job I still think we will create enough at the other end to take the three points and head into the international break in very good nick.
That’s it for today.
See you tomorrow.
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