1. Work our a**es off
Fulham enjoy controlling the football, averaging almost 60% possession throughout the season, the highest in the Championship. They are lightning fast, they pass – and keep – the ball well (83% passing accuracy, again, a league high) and they score plenty of goals – 81 in their 48 games to date, 61 of which have been from open play.
We need to try and disrupt that flow. We are not by nature a pressing team, but when we do (as evidenced against Wolves, for instance), the results can be spectacular. Although defensively we are extremely well-organised and hard to break down, we don’t have the pace to take on teams like Fulham on the counter and need to keep the ball ourselves as much as possible. We have the players to do this – Grealish, Adomah and Hourihane, for instance, are excellent on the ball and bringing others into play.
The likes of Chester, Terry, Jedinak or Whelan don’t want to be getting into foot races with Fulham’s lightning-fast danger men Sessegnon and Ayité, while Cairney and Johansen are no slouches either. So it will be in our interests to keep the ball as much as we can and press Fulham all over the pitch to stifle their quick tempo approach.
2. Stop Mitrovic and Sessegnon
Ryan has been a revelation this season and is the club’s leading scorer with 16 goals.
Since his arrival in January, Newcastle outcast Aleksander Mitrovi has breathed new life into his career in England and Fulham’s promotion challenge, hitting 12 goals in 17 matches as Fulham came within a whisker of automatic promotion. Stopping these two will be vital to our chances of winning this match.
I would expect Alan Hutton to be given the reducer job on Sessegnon, and if he can find room in his pocket alongside Adama, we’ll have every chance of getting the job done. Similarly, Terry and Chester need to be on their best form to shackle the rejuvenated Mitrovic, and there is no reason to doubt that they will be. Those match ups will be a fascinating sub-plot.
I’d expect the more mobile Glenn Whelan to start alongside Conor Hourihane in the middle of the park – with Fulham a purer footballing side than Middlesbrough, we can expect far less aerial pressure. Winning their respective match-ups will be key as well.
