By Tom Bason
August 21 2014

Wolves beat another newly relegated side with a 1-0 victory over Fulham at Craven Cottage. Bakary Sako got the only goal of the game after 15 minutes 

- Wolves played the same starting lineup for the third successive league game, but with a subtle change in the tactics. The shape wasn't much different to the win over Norwich or the defeat at Rotherham, with the exception of David Edwards having a slightly deeper starting position, but the way we played it was changed. Fulham lined up with a reasonably straight forward 4-4-2 formation, with £11m striker Ross McCormack upfront and wonderkid Patrick Roberts on the right side of the midfield. 

- The first noticeable change in tactics came when we didn't have the ball, with Kenny Jackett choosing to employ a low press. We were generally happy for Fulham to have the ball until they were about 10 yards into our half, when we would start pressing. There were a few times when the likes of Edwards, Dicko and Rajiv van La Parra would close down Fulham's defenders, but generally we were happy for them to have the ball. As a result, we defended very deeply with the back-4 often defending the edge of the penalty area. This potentially had issues, particularly as I felt that Fulham's midfielders found it too easy to squeeze the ball into McCormack and Cauley Woodrow in our area, who were often allowed to turn by Danny Batth and Richard Stearman. Fortunately, both of them seemed to want to pass rather than shoot when in a decent position, and this allowed the defence to regain it's shape. Maybe, had we been playing against forwards in better form, we'd have been punished. 

- Our defensive line stayed quite deep when we had the ball, with, in the first half especially, Kevin McDonald dropping in between Batth and Stearman to receive the ball. There quite a few instances when we seemed happy to pass the ball around our back 4,  with each player seemingly confident in everyone else to be able to pass their way out of any tricky situations. I'm not sure if it was a deliberate tactic or not, but in the first half hour we seemed to be passing the ball deep with the intention of bringing the Fulham defence forward. Then, at an opportune moment, McDonald would play play a ball over the top of the defence for someone to run on to; firstly Edwards flashed an effort wide from a narrow angle then van La Parra was challenged by goalkeeper Jesse Jorenen as he went clear on goal. The issue that we had was if the ball forward played forward was intercepted, Fulham would generally have the ball in our half with our defence very deep. And all too often it was lost, especially when Nouha Dicko was coming deep to receive the ball to his feet. Dicko was in his element when the ball was played over the top, but struggled to hold onto the ball when he was trying to hold it up. This is an area of his game that needs some work.

- I didn't think that Fulham played particularly well, and were nervous from the start. Again, I don't know whether it was intentional but we kept possession for quite a long time at the start of the match, and you could feel the frustration going. This spilled over, as both Sean Cunningham and Mark Fotheringham were cautioned for strong tackles inside the opening 10 minutes, with two more players gaining yellow cards for fouls later in the game. Their best player was Patrick Roberts who had a fascinating battle with Scott Golbourne,  one from which they can both walk away with their heads held high. Roberts played as a left footed, right sided midfielder and was the only Fulham player whoever looked like doing anything special. One jinking run in the second half, where he skipped past two or three flying challenges before scooping the ball into the penalty area had shades of Lionel Messi about it. He was very impressive and will benefit more from playing every week in the Championship than he would being on a Premier League bench. 

- So, the goal, a beautifully worked corner kick, that was one of the best set piece moves I've seen from a Wolves team since we used to release Kevin Foley down the right from free kicks on the edge of the area (not that we ever scored from one of those directly,  but I'm almost certain we won a penalty once). Scott Golbourne played a low ball towards the penalty spot, Dave Edwards ran over the ball and Bakary Sako was free to sweep home inside the near post. This was weird on another level - I don't think I can ever remember Golbourne taking a corner before. He took another three, but these were each clipped to the far post where they were met by Batth, alas without troubling the score sheet. We did have an excellent chance to wrap the game up as Dicko ran on to a long ball, drove into the penalty area before being hauled to the ground. Unfortunately, Sako's penalty, while directed to the corner, didn't have the pace on it to beat Joronen who tipped the ball superbly onto the post.

- Finally, a word on a couple of other players not really mentioned yet. Matt Doherty had a strangely attacking game from right back ,  especially considering we were winning 1-0 away at a potentially extremely tough team. I wish I could see his heat map for the game because I'm fairly certain it would be a direct line between the right back spot and Fulham's six yard box. I counted five times he was in the six yard box, and it was on the fifth time that he headed over a glorious chance. The ball in may have been slightly too high, but in that case he should have left the ball for van La Parra who was better placed. I think one of the worries about Doherty getting so far forward was when the attack broke down, he didn't seem to be too much of a hurry to get back into the defence. The other player to mention is Lee Evans who seemed to bear the brunt of most of the frustrations of fans on Saturday. I didn't think McDonald had his best game tonight (it would have been a good performance for lesser mortals,  but not quite up to his normal immaculate standards), but some of Evans' passing was superb. His right footed pinged balls out to van La Parra and Sako were inch perfect, while his left footed clipped through ball to van La Parra in the build up to the to missed Matt Doherty chance was just as good.

Fulham 0-1 Wolves

Discussion started by Wolves , 21/08/2014 00:48

Wolves
21/08/2014 00:48

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014:08:30:19:42:33 by toomb.

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Bradmore Wolf
21/08/2014 11:26

Great result we are playing the relegated teams just at the right time.

Fulham are no where near ready for life in the championship.

Three games in I am feeling a lot more optimistic about our defence.

We all know what's needed though to make a serious attempt on the top 6.

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Risca TM
21/08/2014 12:18

Cheers Tom. Better write-up than in the national 'press'.

Sounds like a very good result, and the players seem pretty confident in themselves; big difference coming into this league on the way up rather than on the way down, with a load of negative dead-wood-heads hanging around your neck.

Not surprised to hear that Fulham looked nervous. While in Germany Magath covered his inadequacies as a tactician or player manager by being a brute in training and throwing money away on large squads of hopefuls. I reckon this could be his last job as a manager anywhere.

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toomb
21/08/2014 12:42

In a nutshell, last night's game was one team who have been playing together for the last year and know and trust each other, against a team who haven't



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