Fulham's midfield looks a perfect balance on paper and, although they don't have a prolific scorer in their ranks, their total number of goals scored (a best in the league eighty five during the regular season), shows that this was never a problem for them, so why have they "failed" this year despite being far and away the best visiting side I saw at Cardiff City Stadium (albeit they had two chances to impress rather than the one everyone else got)?
I'd say that the fact that they were always confident of outfootballing any opponent may have worked against them because it made them more open than they might have been. In the very entertaining league match here, City really should have been out of sight as they made and missed a host of early chances of a kind that we would never have got against a Brighton or Newcastle and, as good as Kenneth Zohore looked that day, their centrebacks were far from convincing in my book - the fact their number one keeper for most of the season ended it on the bench suggests there were issues in that department as well.
However, if I had to nominate one reason above all others as to why they will still be a Championship club next season, I'd go for the number of penalties they missed (I believe it was nine in the end) - if they had been as good from the penalty spot as we were, they would probably have made it into the top two.
Well done to Reading, I wanted to Fulham to win the Play Offs, but, essentially, my attitude towards who I wanted to go up boils down to anyone except Sheffield Wednesday. At least last season they played good, entertaining football while trying to buy their way to promotion, but this time around their Portugese manager has gone for the Mourinho approach as he has used the financial resources, which most other Championship clubs can only dream of, to bring in a string of attacking players and yet still produced a team that bored it's way into the top six - I've no great confidence that Huddersfield can get the better of them tonight, so make sure your lot beat them won't you please Pearcey.
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