Sidwell wins 85% of his tackles as Fulham smash through Palace

Crystal Palace 1-4 Fulham

World-class goals from Pajtim Kasami and Steve Sidwell led Fulham on their way to a big Premier League away win as they strolled to victory over a Crystal Palace side that simply didn’t perform at all throughout this match.

Key Stats:

The key statistics from this game lay in the amount of shots each team had. Crystal Palace had five more shots than Fulham yet only scored one goal, this shows two things. Firstly, it shows Fulham’s clinical finishing and secondly, when Palace had chances – they didn’t take them. This has been Palace’s problem throughout the season to-date – they’ve created and had enough chances but haven’t had enough quality to finish those chances. The Eagles need Dwight Gayle firing as soon as possible.

Fulham will be impressed with their ball retention in this game, the Cottagers completed 405 passes, with a pass completion rate of 80%, suggesting they found it easy to dominate play from the back and dictate the tempo of the game.

Man of the Match:

Although the majority of commentators on the game will say, ‘Steve Sidwell only deserves the Man of the Match award because of the goal he scored.’ – They’re quite wrong. Sidwell contributed far more to the game and his team’s win other than his superbly-taken goal. Firstly, the 30-year-old completed six of his seven attempted tackles and if you look at where those successful tackles took place, you’ll see that the tackles where made in very important places across the pitch and evidently shows the impact Sidwell had on the game, other than his goal.

Steve Sidwell Tackles Won v Palace

The point about how Sidwell made successful tackles all across the pitch is backed up by showing where the former-Reading midfielder played across the field. The Fulham man also helped his team by being able to push forward and playing the ball forward with his very accurate passing (93%) and through helping his defence by tracking back and clearing the ball (3/3), something which Sidwell did very successfully throughout the game.

Performance Score:

Key Observation:

The main worry for Palace coming into this game was the lack of goals they had scored and this problem raised its head once more during this game. With Palace only scoring one from the 14 attempts they had on the Fulham goal, it shows that Ian Holloway and his backroom staff may be thinking towards buying a striker in the January transfer window. Their problems throughout this game were evident from the very start to the end of the match. The Eagles’ total attempts on goal diagram (shown below) for the game as a whole show that over half of their shots on Martin Steklenburg’s goals came from outside the area, further proof that their main striker, Dwight Gayle, wasn’t able to create room or indeed be found by his attacking-midfielders, this was evident by the fact Gayle only had one shot on goal throughout the whole match, not good for a ‘leading striker’.