Peter Grant managed to pack them in for first press conference. Best get his headliners out of the way before discussing who he will field against Notts Forest on Saturday. "There's absolutely no doubt that Fulham can still reach the Play-Offs come the end of the season." "There’s no timeframe at this point regarding Fulham's new manager." He went on to say that quite a few players hadn't trained this week and explained, "Richard Stearman hasn't trained until today. He's been carrying an injury for the last couple of weeks. Tom Cairney has been training in the latter part of the week. Moussa Dembele had been training up until yesterday but he's felt a bit of tightness today so I left him out. We'll see how he is. Sakari Matilla hasn't trained since pulling up just before kick-off last week so we'll see how they are. There are a couple of other bumps or bruises." No word on Ryan Tunnicliffe or Jazz Richards or Ryan Fredericks (who didn't look one hundred percent against PNE). Think I'll sit on the fence for the moment as to who will start.
Little bit extra from the Official site and it's an update on LVC, who I think all of us have been curious to understand his absence. Injured according to Peter, “Christensen’s got an injury at this moment in time since he came back from his international game, and that’s why Lasse’s not been involved".
Please can somone relieve Peter of his rose tinted glasses. That said, it's Fulhamish of him to be massively overly positive to the point it's borderline sarcasm!
Fair play to Grant, you can’t blame him for trying to put an upbeat spin on things, given that them what have created the omnishambles are keeping their heads well below the parapet. And he’s had some rotten luck since taking over, with injuries to key players (loads of them) and Husband’s suspension. I fear those injuries aren’t going to be any better tomorrow and he’ll lose the spine of Stearman, Cairney and Dembele. And his midfield defensive choices in Tunnicliffe and Matilla as well. The limited options may tempt him to go for his favoured ‘diamond’ formation but I hope not and rather he’ll have learned that the system in the second half against PNE suits our players so much better. The probable starting line-up I suspect will be a hybrid - …………………………Lewis…………………… …………Hutchinson...Burn….Ream………. ..Fredericks...Parker…O’Hara……….Husband… …….McCormack………………Pringle… ……………………….Smith…………..
Nearly 60% possession then on the 45th minute Forest score from their first corner .. 1-0. And that folks was our mandatory good half. The second half defies comment and you really do not want to watch their third goal. Returning to statistics we have now conceded 25 goals from a corner this season. That's out of a total of 33 conceded by the way. Doesn't take a genius to see where the problem is.
