The Tanner Report: Fulham 0 Southampton 0
It will not be long before the doomsayers – a group neither short nor few in Fulham – are criticising the team for negativity, forgetting the start of the campaign, or perhaps being the very same people that castigated Scott Parker and his team for conceding 10 goals in their opening games.
Now we keep enough clean sheets to start a laundry.
It’s instructive to identify some comparables here.
Crystal Palace conceded 7 to Liverpool. We might have been 3 up in 30 minutes against the league and European champions and conceded one; Manchester Utd drew at Leicester City. We won there.
Southampton have claimed many scalps. We held them to a draw.
True we are still in the bottom three.
True we lack a centre forward whilst Alex Mitrovic is on the bench. True Ruben Loftus Cheek is yet to impose himself.
These are outweighed by the positives; keeper Areola is in superb form; we have a defensive unit with Anderson and Adairabaiyo at its heart that is mean and well marshalled; Ade Lookman and Bobby Decordova Reid have proved match winners.
Above all there is the drive of Zambo Anguissa the best ball carrier in the division.
I’m not pretending yesterday’s second consecutive goalless draw after nine seasons abstinence of one was pleasing on the eye. It was not.
Southampton missed key players but we did not have Scott Parker present. Game management cannot be done in self-isolation.
My enjoyment of watching the game was spoiled by, on switching on my TV, I was welcomed by the notice that my Sky card and box were not matched.
In over 10 years of Sky Sports subscription this is the first time my reception has been so impeded.
Of course I was referred to the Sky website to resolve this issue and when I went through all the procedure I was told it would take up to four hours to process.
This meant I watched per force the game on my iPad which was not in sync with the main stream.
I was receiving texts that goals were offside before I even saw them.
For the subscription Sky charge they could at least provide a gold standard service.
