Fulham's Dangerous And Disastrous Defense

-Fulham have not been good this season. This can be easily deduced from looking at the table, where they are 17th and have allowed 21 goals, more than anyone else in the Premier League.

-They have given up 16.4 shots per game, 3rd most in the league (Arsenal at 5th most! as has been fully fleshed out elsewhere (like at StatsBomb and StatsBomb).

-This has kind of been disappointing as Fulham are not some hopelessly overmatched team talent-wise like Cardiff or Huddersfield and actually got a bit of preseason hype (from StatsBomb and StatsBomb), where the addition of Seri and André-Frank Zambo Anguissa (an all-name team candidate anywhere in the world) in the midfield seemed likely to push them comfortably above the drop zone.

-That's not happened and their midfield has turned out to be a big defensive liability. Now we get to what you came for, the charts.

Quintile 2 is yellow and Quintile 3 is pink, thanks to the graphic department here at Saturdays on Couch Inc for that design. Fulham's own goal is on the right, our graphic designers always think it's good for you to have to read a couple sentences to understand what is going on.

-I know this metric makes sense to me but when I try to label it I realize how many words I'm using and worry my point might be getting diluted along the way. So I made a handy video of a couple of examples of these back-to-front-for-a-shot-moves. Video is easy to manipulate of course, but can create a good picture for the visual learners among us.

[vimeo 294457371 w=640 h=360] My Movie 5 from SaturdaysOnCouch on Vimeo.

-There is a lot of space there.

-Let's look at a few overall breakdowns to see where opponents are playing passes and how well they are completing these passes.

-One takeaway from this: Timothy Fosu-Mensah in his current role has been an absolute disaster defensively, which is a shame because offensively he's been superb. Fosu-Mensah is at 1.2 tackles+ints per 90, which coupled with that bright green relative completion% against and the quick shot rate they are giving up might mean it's time to sacrifice the offense and go a little more defensive at right back.

-1.2 tackles and interceptions are very low for someone who does their defensive action where Fosu-Mensah does.

-Another thing I checked after watching that compilation was how often an incomplete pass by Fulham led to a quick shot the other way. Man City were number one in this category, which I can rationalize as they've built their game around simply not losing the ball that much. Fulham is #2. Schürrle, Seri, and Sessegnon have been the 3 guiltiest culprits, all in the top 14 for quick shots "conceded" off their passes (17 total shots have come that way). This is something to file away and check on later, just rises to level of a "huh" nugget as of now.

-Soccer is a two-way game, it's really hard to isolate just one side, so let's take a peek at what I think is a quite revealing offensive graph here:

This is a rough way to measure how Fulham are wanting to play: and it's like they are one of the big boys. Short passes, controlling the ball and the game with their attack. To do this you must push your midfield forward (Cairney and Seri are on average further forward than Xhaka, Torreira, Gueye, Schneiderlin, Ndidi, Mendy, Wijnaldum, Matic, Fellaini, Fred, Dier, Dembele, Davies, to name a few). And yes they have Zambo or McDonald usually deeper (McDonald way deeper to the point it looks like a large gap between the 3) but it's another nugget to keep in mind.

-When you push that far forward looking for shots (and Fulham have been good at creating shots), you better have a plan to stop the opponents when you lose the ball. Right now, too often Seri/Sessengon/Cairney/Schürrle are getting behind the play and then there is a big defensive zero behind them in Fosu-Mensah and the rest aren't slowing the opposition down at all. This leads to a lot of shots, a lot of green area for completions and the opponents spending a lot of time pushed right back forward.

-The only teams who attempt their tackles and interceptions further upfield are 5 of the big 6, now some of this could be score effects but add another nugget to the noticeably growing pile that Fulham are probably biting off a bit more than they can chew and forcing shootouts to win.

-If they lose the ball this much and want to still play this way, they desperately need more of a quick press against and a right-back who can defend. I enjoy seeing a recently promoted team trying to play like this, but they are risking their survival by continuing to play so dangerously.