Football News: Wolverhampton Wanderers Player Ratings from The Fulham Match

Sa 8 - despite conceding 3 he was not to blame for any of them and in fact made several very good saves. Needs to improve his distribution.

Semedo 5 - Another bland performance. Most of the problems came down his flank -where Willian and Robinson caused us problems all night - but to be fair he was solid enough defensively (not mentioning pen). Offensively given the amount of the ball he has he just doesn't do much/enough cf Robinson and (seebelow) Doherty.

Bueno (S) 6 - Didn't stand out which I view as a positive. We conceded 3 and it could have been more but I can't say he was to blame for any of them.

Kiman 6 - Could he have done more to stop the first? It was an odd game as we didn't get overrun at all but could have conceded 5 or 6? In Willian they had a player, (like Moutinho), who seemed to have so much time on the ball and see the game so clearly that more than once he simply carved us open and we never came up with the soln. As captain should Kilman have done more - should GON - to eliminate this - which frankly was Fulham's only - threat?

Toti 7 - Surprisingly solid and to my even greater surprise reasonably good on the ball as well. A player who is really growing and now, after adding some composure to his athleticism, looks a genuine Prem defender. Given he cost us pennies, what a find!

RAN - N/A

Lemina 7 - covered lots of ground and with Gomes controlled the central midfield. He also made a positive contribution to our offence. BUT should he have helped out wide where they overloaded our full backs? Had a running battle with the ref - he didn't win!

Gomes 7 - a strong performance v unlucky to be booked after 2 Fulham players got away with far worse tackles in the first ten minutes.

Bellegarde 6 - Sadly has to take a chunk of the blame for their first but gets a lot of credit for ours. Promising start to his career but is probably a WM/AM rather than a CM and def not a DCM

Hwang 7 - Works v hard and did ok but if he had a yard more pace and was a little more clinical probably should have had more than the penalty he did score

Cunha 7 As above he worked v hard and is our most creative player. Scored a very good goal and again might have had more than one

Subs
Doherty 7 - Bizarrely, he could easily have had 3 goals. Twice he cut the ball back into a melee of players, (leading to nothing), the second after a good run where he left two defenders in his wake, when he could and probably should have shot. Once being denied by a great tackle from Castagne - allowed as Hwang's pass was slightly over hit - after a lung busting 70 yard run in support of an excellent fast break took him from LB to RF leaving not only all of our players but all of the defenders (bar Castagne) trailing behind as well! cf Semedo!

Sasa 4 - He is very tall and presumably is good at heading the ball. Unfortunately, he never got close enough to it for us to tell! On this performance, sadly, he is nowhere near good enough. However, maybe if we occasionally crossed/passed the ball for him to head, he might look better? Strange seeing two teams with such different setups, both failing to counter the others.

We use runners carrying the ball and passes down the middle - hence we perhaps struggle against weaker teams who "park the bus" they played it out wide got in behind us down the flanks and crossed into the middle looking for runners - thank goodness Mitrovic has gone and Jimenez is really poor or they would be pretty useful!

Doyle 6 - Came on to close the game out and then we concede and he is trying to chase the game. Didn't really have much of an impact, but both teams were poor in what was a fairly scrappy and low quality 2nd half after we took off our attacking threats and failed to close out the game!

GON 4 Sadly got this one badly wrong - see separate post on earlier thread!

Written by Thefutureisoldgold November 29 2023 22:36:46