Fulham v Chelsea is the focus of our latest Scout Notes piece.
The numbers you see in this article are taken from our Premium Members Area, where you can access Opta player and team data for every single Premier League fixture.
Fulham made it four top-flight wins in a row as Double Gameweek 19 reached its conclusion on Thursday.
Mason Mount (£7.6m) and Andreas Pereira (£4.6m) both supplied assists, after Joao Felix (£7.5m) was shown a straight red card on his Chelsea debut.
The Portuguese was heavily involved at Craven Cottage, lining up behind Kai Havertz (£7.8m) in Graham Potter’s fluid 3-5-2 formation, with a lot of the Blues’ good play going through him. He had a whopping six shots in 58 minutes, the most of any player on the pitch, with four of those efforts on target.
Despite a disastrous start to his Stamford Bridge career, Joao Felix’s return from a three-match ban coincides with a decent run of fixtures for Chelsea, having been priced up as a £7.5m forward by FPL earlier on Thursday.
“It sums up where we are at the moment – everything that can go wrong, is going wrong.
Joao Felix was fantastic in the game before that [the sending off], you could see his quality. He was looking dangerous throughout. The challenge is unfortunate. It is a bit of a forward’s challenge. I don’t think there was too much malice in it and it is an unfortunate action and we are going to lose him now.
Even though I thought the boys kept going, Fulham didn’t have too much in that period and we had some opportunities ourselves but in the end it is a disappointing evening for us. It was a fairly even first half I thought.
It was a bit of a mess for the first goal, which we needed to do better with. With the greatest respect it was more just basic defensive actions we need to do better with.” Graham Potter
It’s now only one win in Chelsea’s last nine league matches for Graham Potter, a period which has seen them keep just two clean sheets. The injuries are piling up, too, with Denis Zakaria (£5.0m) adding to their woes with a quad injury at Craven Cottage.
“The early assessment is that it’s at the top of his quad. He just felt it a bit when he cleared the ball, I think it was. But in terms of the extent of it, it’s too early to say.” – Graham Potter on Denis Zakaria
Pereira, meanwhile, delivered some cracking crosses for Fulham, with his assist for Carlos Vinicius’ (£5.4m) winner moving him up to seven for the season, more than any other FPL player bar Kevin De Bruyne (£12.5m).
As a result, the playmaker ends Double Gameweek 19 on five points – level with team-mate Aleksandar Mitrovic (£7.2m) – having picked up his fourth yellow card of the campaign in the first half. However, owners needn’t worry, as the first cut-off point for Fulham’s suspensions was met this evening.
Elsewhere, differential Willian (£5.5m) scored and received two bonus, taking his Gameweek tally to 15 points, while ‘keeper Bernd Leno (£4.5m) made 15 saves across his two fixtures, resulting in a 14-point haul for his small army of owners.
After scoring two goals tonight, Fulham are up to 32 for the season – only Man City (45), Arsenal (40), Spurs (37) and Liverpool (34) have netted more. Next up is the division’s meanest defence, Newcastle, in what promises to be a fascinating tactical battle between two very good teams, with Mitrovic set to return to the fold.
“He [Mitrovic] will get some rest, but [Carlos] Vinicius will get as many moments as we can get him because he is one of our main options to start as a striker. It is a great chance for him but to also give Mitrovic a bit of a break. But he is still training well and these things are good signs for us. Hopefully he will be back playing his best for us in the next few games, but for now the main solution is Vinicius.” – Marco Silva
Fulham XI (4-2-3-1): Leno; Tete, Tosin, Ream, Robinson; Palhinha, Reed (Cairney 68); De Cordova-Reid (Wilson 68), Pereira (James 90+3), Willian (Solomon 83); Vinicius (Chalobah 90+4)
Chelsea XI (3-5-2): Kepa; Chalobah (Cucurella 79), Thiago Silva, Koulibaly; Azpilicueta, Mount (Ziyech 80), Zakaria (Jorginho 56), Kovacic (Gallagher 79), Hall (Chukwuemeka 79); Joao Felix, Havertz
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