The Man in The Shed

 3^rd March Villain to hero

They say a week is a long time in politics – well it can seem even longer in football. Our third game in a week (and seventh in 21 days) and we were living in hope that the team could avoid another Premier League away meltdown.

So who better to be pitted against than relegation fodder Fulham? Already on their third manager of the season (all with previous Chelsea connections) and they ship goals more frequently than Gary Lineker tweets. Surely we could finally score an away league goal in 2019 ?

So big team news – and its Alonso dropped for Emerson again ! OK, so Kepa is back in the first team after sitting it out on the naughty step last Wednesday. The SKY cameraman was all over the Spanish keeper leading up to kick-off. Quite a dangerous job if you’ve seen the way the lad throws his arms about doing his loosening up exercises.

Looking at the Fulham team you had to say there was nothing too frightening – except perhaps Babel’s hair. The boy clearly wants to be noticed (although perhaps somebody should remind him that he doesn’t play for Liverpool any more so perhaps a black and white rinse might be more appropriate).

Well the good news was that we started the game “properly”. None of that sloppy nonsense in the first 15 minutes against Arsenal or City. And low and behold, you give that man Higuain a chance and he is ruthless. One nil to the boys in blue. Then we decided to give a textbook demonstration of why zonal marking never seems to work very well. OK so I’m not a professional footballer and I’m sure the coaches have a dozen reasons why it’s a solid way to defend a corner but when it doesn’t work your defence looks sh*te. So after three clean sheets on the bounce the question was how were we going to react ? Well with Christensen in for Luiz we were looking slightly more solid at the back but my nagging doubt with this team is that I can only see three potential goal scorers. Other than the front three (as good as they are) you look at our three midfielders and none of them will get you ten goals a season. Even the back four – one or two goals each from the centre backs and that’s about it.

So I was as surprised as everyone else when none other than fans favourite Jorginho pops up to actually shoot (well pass) on target and into the goal – two one to the boys in blue. Fifteen further minutes of pressure should have resulted in more goals. Higuain looking very sharp again but the Fulham rear-guard held out. At this point I’m hoping that failure to capitalise with further goals may come back to haunt us.

The second half seemed (from the comfort of my armchair) to last forever. Whilst we continued to push for further goals there was no quality end product. We had a mad ten minutes when Fulham could (and perhaps should) have equalised but managed to get through it. The inevitable happened of course – villain last week, saviour this week as Kepa finally started to look like a £70 million keeper. OK, so he dropped a sitter in the first half (I blame it on being dazzled by the bright red hair) but came back strong with good saves for the remainder of the game. The inevitable flurry of substitutes occupied the final 20 minutes so we just needed to see out the final five minutes of injury time. Easy, surely ? Well we got lucky as Sessegnon was the thickness of a Rizla paper offside and then the game was over. Three more points – just.

So what else did we learn from the game ? Well Willian took a bit of a battering (even worse than Hazard for once). He even managed to get fouled after the game had been stopped. The ref made a couple of key interceptions for us – much appreciated. The away support were offering plenty of encouragement throughout (although you wonder how high the SKY producer had turned up the mikes at the Chelsea end).

Despite a win for United the North London derby draw means that our chances of making the top 4 have improved slightly – even if we lost a great opportunity to boost the goal difference against a leaky Fulham defence.

Looking ahead we have a whole four days until the next game. Here’s hoping for a barrel full of goals in our home Europa League tie against Dynamo Kiev.