Huddersfield 1-5 Fulham
Absolutely delighted to back in the John Smiths Stadium for the first time in 533 days. It has been a long time away. From the point of view of access to the stadium nothing much had changed. Unfortunately when it came to the performance nothing much had changed either.
We started with Ward and Koroma up front which when playing one of the stronger sides of the division surprised me, I would have thought we would pack the midfield more to be competitive and get more of the ball. Koroma is also more affective when coming in off the left side of the pitch and as our most proficient attacking force against surprised that we were not playing to his strengths.
There was an early sign of what was to come as we backed off Onomah giving him space to get an early shot away which Schofield turned behind. We had the ball in the back of net shortly afterwards but this was ruled out for offside. I’ve yet to see the replay however it wasn’t long before Fulham were gifted the lead. Schofield made a hash of a overhit backpass and presented Mitrovic with an open goal. In fairness to Schofield the goal should not have stood as it had clearly gone out of play. I was directly in line with the touchline and due to the overhit backpass the linesman was well behind the play so just guessed. If only we had VAR. Onomah scored their second due to Fulham showing their strength on a corner when we flapped in defence. In fairness though the lads did not let their heads go and got their deserved goal through Matty Pearson from a corner only for us to show our defensive frailties again and let Cavalho in for an instant reply. At 3-1 and approaching half time you could clearly see that the Town players heads had gone.
Second half -The ineffective pair of Vallejo and Ward were replaced with High and Campbell. Unfortunatley though that was the only thing that had changed as Fulham continued where they left off on top. High tried to probe, Campbell offered nothing more than Ward had. Holmes was finally replaced after having his stroll on the pitch. Sarr stayed on although he looked even slower than last season. Colwill who was one of the bright sparkes brought down Harry Wilson with less than 20 minutes to go and the ex-Liverpool lad violently reacted earning himself a straight red. That prompted Marco Silva to bring on Ivan Cavaleiro (who it had been rumoured we were looking to sign when we had our stint in the prem) and go direct when they had the ball. With us pushing forward Cavaleiro exploited the space to finish well twice before the referee saved us from any further embarrasment.
On the whole great to be back, performance was good in patches but so much was wrong. Fulham weren’t that great but they won the midfield and took their chances.
Individual performance review to follow.
View From the Stand 