The Tanner Report: Bournemouth 3 Fulham 0.
After beating both Nottingham Forest and West Ham 5-0, Fulham have lost by that aggregate score to Burnley and now Bournemouth.
It would be entirely Fulhamish (the old telegram address for Fulham) to get a result against Arsenal in our next game on New Year’s Eve, especially as Raul Ramirez will be returning.
His absence had exposed our greatest weakness – a lack of cutting edge in the final third.
There is also another more recent vulnerability – the keeping of Bernd Leno. That wise old bird David Pleat once observed “Study form before and after a player signs a new contract …”
Leno recently signed a new contract.
Before that, after Joao Pahlinha, he had been our most consistent player but lately he has been prone to error.
Against Bournemouth he should have parried a shot with his outstretched leg but let the ball go under his body, strike an arm and go into the net – committing the cardinal sin of failing to get properly behind the shot and set himself.
After that it was all resurgent Bournemouth as there was no one capable in a white shirt of troubling their keeper Neto.
Ex-Cottager Steve Sidwell was summarising and – to use a cliché – believed that Fulham could get sucked into a relegation fight.
I don’t see this as we already have 21 points and Marco Silva is far more capable than Sidwell’s manger who suffered a relegation: Felix Magat.
Besides Fulham will have Tim Ream and Traoré back, as well as funds to buy in the January window.
We will be losing a key player (Pahlinha) to Bayern but the talk is that we have already lined up a replacement in Brazilian international Andreé.
In my 58th year of support, I have the advantage of Siddy as over these years – and whatever the ownership, in many cases far more self-serving than the present one – Fulham lose form over Christmas only to regain it by Easter.
Ironically, having won away at both Liverpool and Everton in our last relegation season, the then Head Coach Scott Parker was talking to Bournemouth, who subsequently sacked him, and he concentrated more on his next appointment and less on revival for Fulham.
