FulhamMAD has some heavyweight stats on tomorrow’s game. This head-to-head stuff is all very well except that these two teams haven’t met since the turn of the century. However, if we want to put a positive spin on things, and we do, I can reveal that Sheffield Utd have not won at Craven Cottage since 1967! So home banker it is.
And it has to be. It’s far too early in the season to talk about ‘must win’ games, but equally there just aren’t going to be many easier games than this. I’m optimistic though.
Odds and ends/random musings:
Last year Fulham lost more players to muscle injuries than any other team except Newcastle. That these two teams (and Portsmouth) were so much higher than others could be put down to bad luck, or down to something else. Either way, it’s serious stuff. Presumably each player in the Fulham squad has been acquired for a reason, and each time he’s not available someone else has to fill that role. Outside the big clubs there’s simply not the depth in squads to be able to deal with injuries, so I don’t know why teams don’t take this side of the game more seriously. Or put another way, perhaps they do, but I would guess that the costs of dramatically improving the medical facilities would be much lower than the costs of a lot of other expenses incurred by football clubs. I don’t know, but I think this is something that bears watching this season.
The other reason this might be important is that Fulham has quite an old squad. If conventional wisdom is right, players get more injuries as they age. Well, I’ve just worked out that the Fulham squad averages 27 years of age, the team that played Bolton averaged 29, rising to 30 if we exclude spring chicken Rosenior. Which doesn’t sound ideal. I don’t know though, perhaps experience will be crucial to the team’s efforts. We shall see.
