Chez

was this the covid season? I lose track. I felt that we benefitted from that closed stadiums/no fans run in to the season. I seem to recall our squad had continued to train and stay "on it"/match sharp, whilst a lot of other sides had closed down and effectively were on the beach. I might be mistaken.

My concern is despite the manager and form change we will be 'found out' when we play the remaining games against top 6 sides. At least we are on the mix.

You could say the same thing about Maradona's goal of the century. 😉 Doesn't Chris nutmeg Matt Holland at the start? I honestly can't remember and not sure you can even tell on the video.

"walking into pitfall traps with eyes open" - what are you talking about here? Not sure losing to Fulham would "damage our momentum". They are a different level to us right now. I think if we play well, you can take something from the game no matter what he result. I agree fans will be pissed off if the side is weakened, and we lose. You want to see us go for it. However, I think its more annoying to play a weakened team in the cup when you are a PL side. That is when you have you best team and best chance, so that's when you should really go for it.

Wrexham's last two games are Cov and Boro. I wonder if both opponents will be promoted by then, which would drastically change the look of those games. They also have Hull, Sheff United, Watford, Birmingham and us to play. Plenty of opportunities to drop points. If they don't, then fair play to them.

Yeah, it looked a lot better from the away end (side) than on TV. Special for him though.

I'm a huge fan of the FA Cup and it still narks me us losing the game at Sunderland when Poch rested players (all be it not quite as many as I first thought), so I'd always want to see us pick our strongest side, even if we are in the championship. It's not that long ago that Cardiff made the final and Millwall before them. We've seen Wigan win it and get relegated, so there is always aa glimmer of hope despite the big boys dominating in the last decade. The counter will be, at this moment in time, promotion is still on and therefore you have to really consider the league game three days later. Can professionals play to their maximum with that recovery time? I have no idea. Play your best side, lose a couple through injury and you really regret it. But fearing the worst is not the way to live. For me, picking a mishmash of some first team and some reserves is not ideal. You want continuity. We have some depth in midfield, but I'd prefer we kept the back four the same. Selection up front will be dictated by Stewart's fitness.

We are not the Scummers. As Darren Anderton knows, that lot down the road are the fucking scummers.

A quick look on their online ticketing system https://www.eticketing.co.uk/fulhamfc/EDP/Event/Index/1009 and you can see that the've hardly sold any tickets in the Hammersmith End and Jonny Haynes stand. Hard to tell in the Riverside stand as the centre sections are unavailable as corporate, I suspect. FA cup home ticket sales probably only really start moving in the week running up to the game, so they are perhaps leaving themselves room for manoeuvre? I wonder if Saints just don't want to buy those last 1200 up front?

Our squad is strong enough to cope...hopefully. This is what the parachute payments give us. We have got to take advantage.

or Jander. Hopefully they are just being rested. Robinson can't get a slot on the bench either these days.

I agree. You'd of thought they (Fulham) would have enough experience of selling FA Cup tickets by now to know where they stood in the sales curve and the likelihood of them selling out and needing that 1100 tickets for home fans. I guess it can be a sensitive subject - if blocks are empty in the away end when home end is sold out, questions start to be asked by home supporters. This doesn't sound like one of the situations though. I suspect Saints don't want to get left holding lots tickets they cant sell, so this staggered approach is perhaps fine by them too.

Is it just ST holders that can buy or is it open to members/general sale?

Decent place to go watch football. Personally, I like the pubs on the other side of the river. I always feel we have a chance against Fulham. Invariably we play shit though. The non-performance from the fat lad from Poole immediately comes to mind.

After his injury earlier in the season, the club isn't going to start Stewart in a midweek game again after he has played a league game the Saturday before. I think the same applies with Charles (who also had a long time out) until he is deemed fully match fit. Seeing as both were rested during the week and the next game after Sheff Wed is eight days after, there seems no reason not to start both this weekend, if they are the preferred choices.

Jelert looks really lightweight to me. I thought he was woeful in the first half of the Leicester FA cup game. He was playing right in front of me and I used terms to like "lightweight", "passive", and "second best" during that 45 minutes. I didnt really watch him in the second half. I think he may have been better, but I wouldn't rest Bree for him.

Selling out before we have reached season ticket with 0 aways will give the club an idea of the demand for tickets, but if they have to pay for 1700 up front they wont do that. My guess is Fulham won't be able to sell them to their own fans, so they will allow us to sell them and not be charged for any unsold. Hope so, anyway.

"Subject to sales" Do they mean of home tickets or away or both I wonder? They only sold 20k for the Boro 3rd round FA cup game, but I guess you will get an increase for round 5. Craven Cottage has a 29,600 capacity. I assume they will sell the remaining seats in the Putney end and not leave them empty. So are they going to be sold to home or away fans or could they still split them into say 1000 and 700? Will we be able to sell another 1700 tickets?

Yes. Some decent side. We struggled in the away games with some of those. Norwich seems like a really tough game and Bristol absolutely smashed us. The long and shirt of it is if we want to get promoted, we need to play (and get results) like a side that is good enough to get promoted. We have pretty much no injuries and the side is on a good run. We have no excuses. If we don't get into the play offs it will be because we don't deserve too - mostly thanks to the start we had.

promotion is, not the play off final.😉 I agree. It's essential to get promoted from a financial point of view. Being sustainable in the championship is almost impossible, especially if you are actually trying to make a stab at promotion. That said, I am not sure anyone is sustainable in the PL either. As a company we made hefty operational losses in the PL which were offset by player sales. But at least we could make those sales. After a few seasons in the championship the amount you get from players sales become almost nothing, so you become reliant on ticket sales...which tend to fall with every season in the championship...yeah nothing much good comes of being in the championship too long.

There is a lot of talk on here about us playing back and square and not moving the ball forward quick enough. That might be true, but you cant create chances if you haven't got the ball, so ball retention is still a priority its seems, even if that means going back and across. Hendrie on the commentary last night said we were "too slow" right in the middle of 30 pass move (that was seeing the ball go nowhere when he said it) that subsequently led to a great chance. It made me smile. Like it or not, that's the game we are playing these days most of the time. Not too dissimilar from Russ-ball, but thankfully a few more common sense clearances and a few more 'in between the lines' through balls mixed in.

He seems to be everywhere. Maybe he always was? Still a walking yellow card. The championship is clearly his level.

I was thinking that. How many times do we dominate games, maybe go in front but the opponent has 'one of those nights' where things fly off the boot into the top corner. To be honest, I didn't think we played that well. QPR gifted us the goals and didn't take advantage of their good moments. We did work hard and breaks were closed down quickly, but I just felt that a better side would have hurt us. We are a little gung ho.

Shot stopping looks good, but he has to improve in terms of crosses and set pieces. The six yard box has become a mosh pit and he's looked uncomfortable at times. That said, pretty much all keepers have been struggling with this situation.

Larin bust a gut to get there, Leo looked up, clearly saw him, but ignored what looked like the right option of a square pass and shot. Thankfully he scored, but I think Larin would have been well within his rights to give him a bollocking if he hadn't. Funnily enough there was another opportunity like that in the second half when Aziz went through, this time slightly on the right side. On this occasion he chose to play a disguised no look square pass, which was blocked/cut out. I thought on that occasion Azaz should have been more direct/selfish and taken the ball on and shot himself. Sometimes we are selfish and sometimes not selfish enough. We were well clear before both incidents so it didn't matter, but making the right choices when its 0-0 against say Coventry is going to be important.