Saturday showed Marco Silva’s greatest asset – adaptability    

When the Fulham team was released on Saturday, there would have been plenty of eyebrows raised among the Fulham fanbase at the omission of Emile Smith Rowe, who has been excellent (and almost ever-present) since his big-money move from Arsenal in the summer. 

And outside the fanbase, those eyebrows will have been raised even further. Luke Edwards in the Telegraph said that ESR was “the heart of everything good about Fulham”, and outside of the SW6 bubble, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Whites are a one-man team – with the former Arsenal man being credited for so much of Fulham’s excellent start to the season. 

This shouldn’t read like criticism of Smith Rowe, whose gifted ball control, ability to glide into dangerous areas, link up down the left-hand side, and eye for goal have immediately (and rightly) endeared him to us all. But Marco Silva’s Whites have always been more than the sum of their parts, and this in so many ways is the Portuguese manager’s greatest asset. 

Redesign and rebuild

When Aleksandar Mitrovic upped sticks and swapped SW6 for the Saudi sands, many thought we wouldn’t cope, but we started to share the goals around, revitalised Raul and unearthed the goalscoring potential of Rodrigo Muniz. When João Palhinha made up his mind that Munich, not Motspur, meant more to him, Silva breathed new life into Saša Lukić, and changed the shape of the team to fill the gap. 

These are not like-for-like replacements – Fulham do not have the social or financial capital to just switch out top-quality players and bring alternates of a similar calibre in. Of Silva’s many positives, his ability to adapt and overcome is not spoken about enough.

Pragmatism nearly pays off

Which brings us to Saturday, and the midfield makeup that the gaffer decided that he was going to employ against the Champions, who had not lost in 49 games at the Etihad, and whose winning record against Fulham is now the longest in English football history for any club against another in the league. 

Silva’s Fulham did end up losing this game. But they didn’t go quietly to the gallows like many expected. The addition of Sander Berge eventually brought both steel and silk in the midfield after a shaky start, and the shift from a 4-2-3-1 to a more defensively minded 4-3-3 paid dividends as Fulham adapted their gameplan to torch City in transition. 

Sitting deeper in the middle gave Fulham a shield wall from which to build, something Pep Guardiola alluded to in his post-match presser; and while you can maybe make a case that the Whites should have been out to close down the strikes from Mateo Kovacic, and especially Jeremy Doku, a little bit faster – reducing City to potshots from outside the area is a sensible tactic, and one that served Arsenal well in their title tussle with Guardiola’s men a few weeks ago. 

Fulham’s set-up allowed for two more things as well. Firstly, Andreas Pereira had perhaps his best game this season, shuttling between his defensive duties as an eight, and a little more freedom to join the attack as a 10, in a hybrid between his roles of last season and this. His darts forward caused problems, as he showed with his goal, but his manic workrate off-the-ball helped Fulham to keep City’s incredibly talented attacking corps at bay as well. 

Secondly, Fulham had options when chasing the game. Coming from behind has never really been a particularly strong point of Silva’s sides, but at 3-1 down, he was able to introduce Smith Rowe, Muniz and Reiss Nelson, injecting new life into a game that seemed done and dusted. 

With those three on the pitch, Fulham laid siege to the City goal, resulting in Rodrigo’s first goal of the season and a finale in which the Whites threw everything at the defending Champions, who were forced into a desperate rearguard action of their own to hang onto the three points. 

The many faces of Fulham

Frustration is fine after a performance like this – Marco said afterwards that it was his prevailing emotion and the dominant one in the dressing room. Fulham created more than enough chances to get something out of this game, maybe even to win it. But on a more macro level, the most encouraging thing about this performance was that Fulham are becoming a multi-dimensional side – and that’s absolutely crucial if we’re to succeed this season. 

Fulham need to have many faces. We need to be able to dominate the ball and control games, especially at home against teams who are around and beneath us in the table, utilising the combinations and pockets that players like Smith Rowe and Alex Iwobi can pick up to break down defensive lines. 

But equally, it’s crucial to have a different way of playing when we go to places like the Etihad, or the Emirates, or Anfield. To be able to find solutions in different areas – the searing pace of Adama, the more defensively-minded midfield, the options off the bench to change games.

Alex Iwobi perhaps sums this up best. Out on the left against Newcastle, he was a menace, drifting into midfield, linking up beautifully with Smith Rowe, steaming into the box to create opportunities. Here, out on the right, he put in a defensive shift which Bobby De Cordova-Reid would have been proud of, selflessly sacrificing his own attacking output for the needs of the team.

There are fantastic players in this Fulham squad, of which Emile Smith Rowe might well be the most talented. But Fulham are not a one-man team, and the performance against City showed what they actually are – a multi-faceted group, able to adapt to the situation in front of them, led by a manager whose tactical readings are up there with the best in the game. And that’s something we can all get behind.