Fulham 1 Sheffield Wednesday 1: Quick thoughts

If it isn’t broken don’t fix it. That seemed to be philosophy of Slavisa Jokanovic going into this match as he started an unchanged side.

Fulham didn’t reward the manager’s faith in this side by going down a goal early as Fernando Forestieri was able to slot home the first shot of the game.

Sheffield Wednesday seemed to be employing the strategy to pounce on mistakes and transition to attack as quick as possible. When on defense they were pressing and not afraid to foul to break up an attack. This could have (should have?) come back to bite them in the 33’ when Stefan Johansen went down in the box while a Wednesday player had a fistful of his shirt. Wednesday ended the first half with 10 fouls and two bookings.

The first half was almost the perfect illustration of the problems Fulham have had at times this season. Fulham had over 63% possession and completed 80% of their passes. Remember what we said about Fulham’s passing numbers? Whatever the reason, Fulham didn’t create a lot of chances only taking four shots and generating .21 expected goals.

• Fulham waited way too long to turn things on. Half of their shots came after the 76’ mark, and five of the 14 shots came after 85’.
• Tomas Kalas didn’t have a great game.
• I’ll have to wait to see it, but everyone seemed to think that was a penalty.
• Sheffield Wednesday played some pretty ugly tactics. They had 16 fouls and four bookings and that doesn’t even show how bad it was. When the team account tweets this, you know things are bad.

• Scott Malone does it again. The Jazz Richard for Scott Malone swap may be the best transfer business Fulham have ever done.
• All said and done, this was probably a fair result. Fulham ended up winning the xG battle, but not by so much you’d have expected them to win.