Knight off for his second yellow. Penalty kick for Blackburn. Van Der Saar's first good look at the ball is to pull it out of the back of his net. Dickov. 0-2 Blackburn.
Zack Knight ( Fulham) with a sliding tackle in the box hand touches the ball, Penalty and red card, Black Burn scores up 2-0
Volz and Knight have been really poor when I've seen them this year....1 v 1, Volz gets beat all the time (straight up, not when he's chasing from behind), and Knight keeps giving up clear stoppable goals, and today's penalty was idiotic- what was he thinking? (woulda been much better to let the guy go 1 v 1 at an angle on Van der Saar, vs. a clear red/penalty)
not a very good showing by Boca today, got beat with speed quite a bit. McBride looked good in his time and Freidel made some nice saves, the one on Cole was huge and a nice quick reaction to McBride's header. Freidel name MOTM by FSW
After watching the 2nd half, I blame Coleman for this. Boca was played very high - almost as a midfielder. So he constantly had to run back to cover the left flank. Coleman needs to switch to a true 3-5-2 or hire Heyduk if he wants to play with these tactics. BTW - Blackburn could provide doubles for half of Hollywood. Tugay as "Smeagol". Dickov as Sam Neill. Matteo as Mel Gibson. Friedel as Superman.
Why is Bouba-Diop on the field??? the guy was a disaster... Malbranque was not at his best today... the backline was horrific... they were lucky they were only dealing with the likes of Dickov and Gallagher... the two center backs were attrocious and the commentators were spot on with Boca... he took a couple of questionable angles to the ball and was a bit too "relaxed" going after some of the garbage balls that were played to him... overall a poor effort from Fulham... i'm not sure what McBride shows (or doesn't show) in training... but when he plays he always gives an honest effort... he provides a strong presence in the air and makes himself dangerous to the opposition... he passes well (although the little ball in his own area was suspect) and seems to help get his teammates forward... i'd like to see him get more of a chance... Cole is a more dangerous player in and of himself... but McBride seems to do more for the team...
If you are going to put McBride, Fulham needs to do what (for the most part) they were doing....play to his head. He wins most of the stuff in his box in the air, and he can directly nicely (with touch). Otherwise, play to him when you can play to feet (but not a running game). Having said, Brian shoulda done better with his chances today...but then again Cole just wasn't on either. McBride is a 'link' player- he needs that 2nd guy to read his flicks, and take it, and do something with it. McBride is not a guy to beat guys 1v1 in the flow of play. Hopefully Coleman gets this by now. At Everton, Radz and McBride had a pretty nice partnership... Clint Dempsey is probably as good as Papa Diouf. Man, that guy had some howler(s) of touches today... Blackburn looked like Blackburn of 2 years ago (Friedel included)...
1. That's one of those matches where you expect that in the next few days we'll learn of some huge behind-the-scenes bust up at Fulham. Except for the imprecision in the attacking third, a lack of urgency all over the pitch, and a cascade of mental errors, they were brilliant!! 2. A good poll question would be, who was worse, Boca or Knight. The thing is, this was an atypical performance for Boca, but just barely below his standard for Knight. I don't get Coleman's attachment to him. This is another club that oughta make a run at Nelsen. Of course, what they REALLY need to do is find a left fullback, and move Boca into Knight's position, thus improving themselves at two slots. Man, their defense looked positively Blackburnesque out there. Still, it was very sad to me how, esp. in the first half, B'burn continually exploited Fulham's left side. (As a Nats fan it saddened me. As a B'burn fan, I was thrilled.) Part of it was that CB wasn't getting much help from his winger, but dude, you've got to play with some urgency. Seriously, if I were Coleman, I'd probably sit Carlos for a match to send him a message about commitment.
You got it exactly right. Boca looked real bad out there today. He was constantly getting beat on the wing - by Reid, in particular, who beat him to the touchline to get an assist on the first goal - and he's useless going fwd. He made one overlapping run the whole game & that was a bust because he was (unfairly) called for offsides. But you knew he was uncomfortable going fwd, what really surprised me was to see him constantly overcommit & get used by the likes of Reid & Emerton. And Knight is worse!! He never looked comfortable & he headed Dickov through to Fulham's goal at one point! Has Coleman ever explained why he won't give Boca a chance in the center? Is it because of his height? (Knight & Rehman are both 6'+ & I believe Knight is 6'4".) Or is it just because they have no cover at left back? I know I've never been impressed with Knight. Coleman knows that Boca is playing out of position - he said as much in that Made In America special - so maybe he gets a fullback in January & let's Boca fight for Knight's job?? In good YA news, Friedel was excellent. And McBride changed the course of the game when he came on. Lots of energy, lots of running. Usual stuff.
Boca was brought in as cover for the left back Bonnissel who has played only a few matches in the past 1+ years. The other left back is Adam Green who is young and without much experience. It will be interesting to see if Boca gets moved to the center for the next match since Knight will be out with a red card. The other choice in the center is Ian Pierce.
That was the worst game I've seen Boca play for Fulham this year. Sadly for Fulham, he probably wasn't even their worst defender on the day. Actually much of the Fulham team was lethargic today. On the plus side, McBride did some good things, and Brad Friedel was excellent when he needed to be with 2 excellent saves.
I was at the game (in fact...that's my Press box report up there). As you can tell from the postgame quotes, COleman was pretty furious with his players after the match. And, to be honest, rightly so. Nobody, including Bocanegra looked like they were really intending to fight for this game. Boca looked like he was obviously playing out of position, but he really should have done more on the cross that led to the first BB goal.
Turned the TV on in second half and thought that Fulham must be down a man - there's so much space on their side of the field that it's almost comical. (Well, they did lose a man. But that's long after I started watching.) Boca had a bad game. Don't know how else to put it. He was so consistantly bad that I started wondering if an alien just took over his body. On a positive note, Blackburn needed a win and Friedel did what he needed to ensure that. Hopefully, it means Rovers have finally turned things around and could stay up at the end of the season. After all, Friedel is the only American starting keeper in EPL now.
That YA report was interesting. I think Coleman has alot of good attributes for a manager. The fault I see is talent management. He brought in McBride to be a lone striker, and not even his biggest fans thought that would work. McBride is a fine tandem forward, but just utterly lacks the skill set of a lone striker in a 4-5-1. And Boca...a fine central defender, he was forced to play left back when ?Bonnissel? was injured. He did OK, but rather than attack the problem and find a left fullback and put Boca in the middle, he just left "well enough" alone. This is a ship that needs to be righted. They have the elements of a team that shouldn't be in a relegation fight, but the pieces just aren't put together right. If I were Coleman, I'd think about shoring up the D with a real left fullback, get a tough minded defensive mid (even going so far in the defense-first perspective as to look at an Armas-type, barely-skilled destroyer) and go 4-4-2. To my eye, his midfielders don't defend well enough to play 4-4-2, so he's playing a 4-5-1 so he won't leak too many goals. But he doesn't have the attacking personnel for that either. Basically, I think everything worked when they had Saha, but Coleman never really looked at the team with a fresh eye when Saha left.