{"id":13346,"date":"2026-05-02T02:46:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T01:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=13346"},"modified":"2026-05-02T23:30:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T22:30:30","slug":"putting-fulham-to-the-pavement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=13346","title":{"rendered":"Putting Fulham to the Pavement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color:#fff;display:inline-block;font-family:Roboto,sans-serif;color:#a7a7a7;font-size:11px;width:100%;max-width:594px;\"><div style=\"padding:0;margin:0;text-align:left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/2241487378\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" rel=\"noopener\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div><div style=\"overflow:hidden;position:relative;height:0;padding:65.99327% 0 0 0;width:100%;\"><iframe src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/2241487378?et=yaD8Fy6AQxRXbWzdJrpJJQ&amp;tld=com&amp;sig=kg2zzs-86TemGOxyY5l_Q5suu_vZaQLxt7A8_Eac5fY=&amp;caption=true&amp;ver=1\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"594\" height=\"392\" style=\"display:inline-block;position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;margin:0;\"><\/iframe><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>28 days from now we could be celebrating the double. THE double. Four games in the league and potentially two in the Champions League depending on how Tuesday goes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pretty exciting. We\u2019ve never been in the semi-finals of the champions league whilst being in the middle of a title race. Last year we were miles off the top by this point. Not even the Invincibles could manage it back in 2004. Despite the ridiculous number of injuries (again) we have managed to<br>go the distance in the hardest and most physically demanding league in the world as well as the greatest club competition in the world. That is an achievement in itself albeit not one that anyone will give us any credit for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fulham, West Ham, Burnley and Palace are the four remaining hurdles between us and that elusive league title we haven\u2019t lifted for 22 long years. On paper those are four very winnable games even if they all present their own set of challenges. We have looked very nervous and fatigued in recent<br>weeks so nothing can be taken for granted particularly with City breathing down our necks. Given the way in which the fixture list has presented itself, tomorrow\u2019s game also presents the chance to go six points clear again and put the pressure firmly back on City ahead of their tough looking trip to<br>Everton on Monday night. It really is imperative we pick up all three points as they could be back level on points with us by the time we kick off away to West Ham next weekend. I think it goes without saying that any more dropped points at this stage would be more or less fatal to our title<br>challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To be honest, I expect another nervy atmosphere at the Emirates tomorrow. I know in an ideal world we all want the fans to create a cauldron but the reality is that expectations are so high after years of near misses that the prospect of a fourth straight second placed finish terrifies us all. An early goal would help but as we saw last week in the 1-0 win over Newcastle, that still might not be enough to settle the nerves. I expect another cagey affair. Fulham showed in their win over Villa last week that they are still in the hunt for European football and their minds are nowhere near the beach just yet.  They will be compact and the onus will be on us to create chances which we have really struggled with in recent weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In regard to team news, Saka and Eze should be fit to start after their cameos in Madrid in midweek.  It seems that Timber is still some way off match fitness and who knows if we\u2019ll see him again this season. He is apparently close to signing a new deal and that certainly is good news. Havertz is still out although pushing to be back for Tuesday\u2019s huge showdown with Atletico. I think it would be wise to rest Ben White as he will certainly be needed on Tuesday. We will probably see a side like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Raya<br>Mosquera  Saliba  Gabriel  Calafiori<br>Zubimendi  Rice  \u00d8degaard<br>Saka  Gy\u00f6keres  Eze<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left\">Having made that prediction, \u00d8degaard was forced off in midweek yet again, so who knows what\u2019s going on there. If he does miss out you\u2019d expect Eze to be pushed into the middle with Martinelli on the left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left\">As for Fulham, I don\u2019t know or care about their team news. I hear Iwobi is ruled out. Tomorrow is not about them unfortunately. I have no opinion on Fulham as a club other than it\u2019s a lovely place to live and their fans are tinpot. I\u2019ve only ever met one Fulham fan in my life, and he was certainly an odd bloke. Not saying that\u2019s the case for all Fulham fans, I\u2019m sure they\u2019re a decent bunch but I can only go off what I know. I have always got the sense that if a nuclear bomb wiped Fulham off the<br>face of the earth nobody would notice. But then again, Fulham are only down the road from Chelsea so surely a nuclear bomb would wipe them out too. Initially, we\u2019d all be laughing about the likes of Enzo Fernandez and Cucurella being blown up and Chelsea fans being really sad. Then somebody would say, \u201chey, what about Fulham\u201d and we\u2019d all go \u201coh yeah, wonder if they got nuked too\u201d then we\u2019d probably just go back to laughing at Chelsea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left\">No shade on Fulham of course. But they\u2019re like the pavement. No one ever thinks about pavement.  But we all know it\u2019s there. Well, the pavement is probably more important than Fulham. Otherwise, we\u2019d just be walking on cement probably. They\u2019re just a remarkably unremarkable club which is fine.  I just have no sweeping statements to make about them. I hope we beat them 2-0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left\">COYG.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images 28 days from now we could be celebrating the double. THE double. Four games in the league and potentially two in the Champions League depending on how Tuesday goes. Pretty exciting. We\u2019ve never been in the semi-finals of the champions league whilst being in the middle of a title race. Last [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13346"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13346"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13354,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13346\/revisions\/13354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}