Fulham Lose to Wolverhampton 1-0

Fulham lost to Ipswitch on the road despite having a very dominante performance. That sucked, yet there was promise of better future results based on the events and how they played. Then, this weekend, we lost again to Millwall in a game that supporters could have reasonably expected a point. Yesterday Fulham dropped their third in a row with a loss to Wolves in their mid-week match. This loss hurt more than that previous two because it felt like we deserved it. For the first time all season we got the outcome we deserved--no points.

It's not that there weren't positive performances. Jesse Jorgen continues to show signs of being as good as we would have needed him to be to make a real push to the playoffs, Nikolay Bodurov is looking like a steal of a free and Scott Parker is showing to be the veteran midfielder we needed him to be. Oh, and there is Patrick Roberts.

The problem is that Cameron Burgess has had two back-to-back games with poor situational moments, the strikers--or whomever is taking shots--are missing chances and Felix Magath has made confounding line-up decisions for the third straight match. Now it's not that they were necessarily outright bad selections.

Sean Kavanagh probably has merited an opportunity at left back from the practice field. Mark Fotheringham has seemingly been a favorite of Magath whom he's been waiting the opportunity to work into the rotation and a mid-week game is a good time for that. There is also the situation where you don't want to overplay Emerson Hyndman or other youngsters.

Diving deeper into the perceived problems with those decisions is the absence of young play makers. It appears at least on the surface that boss Felix Magath is punishing Thomas Eisfield or Chris David for their on-the-ball decisions. We don't actually know that for certain but in leiu of their absences and other evidence it causes people to make those assertions.Right or wrong it's being thrown out there and while it's a bit pessimistic you can't necessarily throw it out.

The omissions of David and Eisfield were felt because of how bad the team looked and unorganized it felt early on in the match. Simply because it was more youngsters playing together for the first time at the first team level. I think we can appreciate that Magath is trying to get young players and seemingly rewarding those on the squad he feels deserve a chance. Unfortunately with someone there to help organize things and move players around things just never got going.

Now things have headed south in the table and the immediate reaction is that Magath is tinkering too much. Yes, it may behoove him to try and keep some continuity across the line-up for a few matches prior to jumping straight into "tinkering".

It's fair to have the feeling of frustration and last night didn't make things better. In fact it probably compounded the problem since it was an actual poor performance combined with a poor result. Which makes the conversation of process vs result irrelevant. Not to say that we don't want to focus on the process but it validates the result and with it the emotional response that comes with it.

Football is a game littered with emotional responses. Sometimes that's bad and it leads to bad decisions. Maybe this is a good thing at this stage of the season. Maybe frustration, disappointment and other mixed sentiments will lead to the club being forced into a move before the transfer window closes. Maybe this is just a reflection of what we should expect the whole season.

I'm inclined to simply believe this just one of those losses that stings a bit. There are going to be losses like this through the season. We're not a club that is going to cut through this league, at least not right now at any rate, and that's alright. It just means there are going to be times of frustration.

Maybe this is just me speaking from the bewildered years under Jol where things looked consistently bleak, but the performances of our youth show promise that relegation isn't a real concern and that the playoffs are still a legit goal. First things first, a win would be nice or some amount of points in the far right column is the immediate goal.