Positives and Negatives: Man City 3-2 Fulham

With Fulham in fine form matching their best ever start to a Premier League campaign, if ever there was a time to play the most dreaded fixture of the season, Man City away, it was now. With the champions drawing their last three outings, fans were going into this fixture with perhaps a touch more optimism than usual. But alas, the firepower of City proved too much in the end in a very respectable performance from the whites. Stephen breaks down the very best, and worst, aspects of our outing at The Etihad.

Positives

A finely-balanced and brave first half

After an initial flurry of City chances which had me worried it was going to be one of those days reminiscent of last season’s 5-1 defeat at The Etihad, the balance of Fulham’s first half performance from a defensive set-up to stop City, alongside dangerous chance creation was very admirable. Going into half-time, it really felt as if we should be leading against the champions on their home turf, which I will dive into more specifically later.

Looking back into that fixture last season, the biggest contrast between the two performances has to be the result of some huge squad improvements. While I’d be the first person lining up for the Tim Ream fan club, Joachim Andersen undoubtably is a night-and-day comparison between the two specifically in terms of pace and range of passing. Adama Traore, as I’ve mentioned before, feels like a new signing, Sander Berge gave a strong outing on his first Premier League start and having Reiss Nelson and Emile Smith Rowe to hand is a seriously strong offering that even the world-class defence can fear.

Our shape with Kenny Tete almost coming in as a centre-back with Alex Iwobi dropping into a right-wingback role did the job really well with a defensively sound performance overall that offered a lethal counter attack while also being able to assertively play out from the back. Two of those halves and Fulham undoubtedly walk away with all three points. But alas, football is a game of two halves.

An assist of Raul quality

You’d be very hard pushed to find a better contender for assist of the season. It takes something exceptional to penetrate the goal of City at the Etihad with conviction, and the way Raul Jiménez controls the ball to take it away from two City defenders, then back-heel it over the remaining opposition players to dip the ball perfectly into space for Andreas Pereira to attack was breathtaking; building from his superb piece of play against Newcastle for the opening goal of that game. 

It is a clear marker of what Raul brings to the Fulham team outside of his impressive goal-scoring record; a relentless work rate with impressive ball control and passing range. I would argue that, in this vein of form, this rendition of Jiménez is even better than ‘peak’ Raul before the head injury that everyone keeps comparing him to. Yet another example of a Marco Silva redemption and renaissance story that we love to see.

To top it all off, it almost felt like a direct burying of the hatchet from last game week where Andreas found himself overly frustrated by Raul for burying the winning penalty last weekend. The two embraced one another in the goal celebration and hopefully that little tiff is well and truly put to bed.

Showing our strength in depth

Last season we were forced to bring on a very inexperienced Luke Harris in the 16th minute as Tom Cairney was forced off with an injury. With the greatest of respect to Harry Wilson and Bobby De Cordova Reid, our starting wingers at the time, having Iwobi and Traore offered so much more penetration. 

Off the bench having the likes of Nelson as an option is proving to be well and truly effective in one of the most astute of Fulham’s Deadline Day special signings. His return for his appearances in a Fulham shirt is excellent as he bagged the third goal to bury Newcastle in our last outing at the Cottage straight after his finish in the cup against Preston. In this challenging appearance, he finely cut the ball across from the right wing to find the feet of Rodrigo Muniz, setting up an excellent goal that gave Fulham a sniff of hope for a comeback.

Imagine having a £34m player sitting on the bench for Fulham, what a luxurious time we live in as Emile Smith Rowe was also brought into the field. Marco was right not to start him in this particular fixture which required a lot of defensive guile, but it does highlight how much variety and depth we finally have in our squad which could see us achieve that top ten finish we should be aiming for this season.

With Muniz’s fine finish in front of goal, albeit with a slight deflection, we’ve also got two striker/centre-forwards champing at the bit for that starting place in a team that can create a lot of chances. Aside from the goalkeeping and left-back positions, we can comfortably say every outfield player has a more than capable deputy waiting in the wings. Does anyone else secretly wish we still had Ballo-Touré?

Negatives

A slow start to the second half… again

In a moment that was almost a carbon copy of Newcastle’s goal against us this season in terms of timing, it appears Fulham were caught short from the second half kick-ff again and that ultimately was one of the key moments of the match that cost us. With City’s tails up, the last thing they need is confidence to play against us, and that goal seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief for City fans as they became a little more daring from then on, with more control over the game that gave Jérémy Doku the scope to take a punt from distance to finely kill the match off in style.

At home we got away with it, although we created a very tense second half against the Toon for ourselves, we prevailed, but today it proved far too much. Are the Fulham players’ heads still processing Marco’s heavy words and tactics that they’re not quite ready from the get-go? Should we be warming up on the pitch a little sooner and more intensely? Either way it’s something that needs addressing. Tactically we seem to have locked down the end-of-the-match heartbreakers that we experienced against Manchester United and West Ham, but perhaps there is more work to be done in this area of the match which seems a little disrupted. Get your energy gels in quicker and switch on, lads.

Adama’s woeful wastefulness

If there was a neutral section of this article Adama would slot right in. So far this season Traore has actually been a lot more clinical than usual stats in terms of goal contributions, and his overall play and what he offers in terms of strength, pace and aggression more than makes up for any odd chances missed here and there. He is comfortably one of my favourite players in a Fulham shirt for those blood-pumping moments that only he can create.

Today epitomised the shortcomings of Traore’s game. Having created three exceptional chances for himself, bursting away on the counter and brushing aside defenders such as Rico Lewis to one side like they may as well not even be there, we saw a frightened City defence struggle to cope and a clear outlet for our attack that worked so effectively.

But it was the main man’s finishing today that fell short of the mark, in a game that Adama could comfortably have walked away with holding the match ball after a historic hat-trick at the Etihad. The first chance, he tried to astutely place into the bottom right hand corner but it was the outstretched foot of Ederson Moraes that saved the day. A fine save, but he has to be doing better. The second saw Adama beat the defender to the ball and the keeper, but fire over the crossbar from relatively close range. The third chance was just far too close to the keeper again and at this point you can tell Traore is in his own head about the whole thing.

Ultimately, I would much rather have our number eleven on the pitch to create these brilliant chances, and he came up against one of the world’s best keepers, but you’ve got to bury one of those chances in a league that heavily relies on attackers being clinical. The player in the Premier League you could compare Traore to most in terms of lethal pace and strength on the wing would be Doku, and today in comparison we saw just how important taking your chances can be.

Kovakic carelessness

Before the match the usual conversation of life without Rodri continued, as the narrative question around City is whether they can win the league without one of their best players. As one of the best defensive midfielders in the game it’s a natural thing to ask, and following their three consecutive draws it’s a small wonder why people are challenging them on this.

However, Mateo Kovacic is a mighty fine deputy with the return of Ilkay Gündogan to the squad, and similar to the João Palhinha situation at Fulham, forces City to play with a slightly different style in the middle of the pitch. Mateo has always had an eye for goal and attacking play in general, and today we let him make full use of his locker as we focused so heavily on stopping the champion’s many direct attacking threats such as Erling Haaland, Phil Foden and Jack Grealish, but effectively there was a final piece that we missed that allowed the central midfielder a little too much time and space to become the main threat of the match.

It was Berge’s first premier League start for Fulham in the Premier League, and stylistically we don’t have the aggressive slide tackles of our former number twenty six to chop up the play like we used to as we’ve set out a different system this season. Perhaps those small details cost us today, but hopefully this is something in time we can address as newer players embed themselves into the team more. It’s worked so far this season and being overly critical in a fixture like this wouldn’t be fair, this level of depth and quality is exactly why Manchester City are a force to be reckoned with.

We were good value for money, but ultimately we left with nothing as our 15-year search for a win at The Etihad continues.

With that mountainous task now over and done, leaving with an improved scoreline from last season and our goal difference more or less intact, we can now look forward to a favourable run of fixtures to climb back up the table with home games against Aston Villa, Brentford and Wolves as well as away days against Everton, Palace and Spurs. Time to get back into those European spots?