Fulham preview

I'm very excited about Saturday's match. The football we played against Portsmouth was probably the best we've played in 2008. And the fact that every point won increases Sven's likelihood of staying next season means that these games mean more than they otherwise would.

One corrective to this is our record against teams who come to play anti-football. That 0-0 against Wigan was the worst match I have ever watched, and our record against poor teams isn't very good. Our best games in the last few months have all been against teams who play football against us: Portsmouth, Tottenham at home and obviously the win at Old Trafford. When teams park the bus, we're not very good at breaking them down. I think this is the ultimate difference between us and Villa and Everton, but I'll look at that in more detail, and with evidence rather than intuition, in post-season.

Anyway, Fulham are going to be battling very hard on Saturday. All the talk coming out of Craven Cottage is that they need to win, and that a point is equivalent to a loss. Corluka said on the website today that this desire to win will mean that they'll come and play open football. I'm not sure that's true: Fulham's most likely means of winning is to 1) not concede and 2) grab something from a set piece. Playing open football would actually decrease their chances of winning, in that they just don't have the players for it and we do.

Hopefully, it will be like those home 1-0s against Derby, Birmingham or Sunderland. If we score the first goal, I'm sure we'll be fine. And let's not forget, Fulham are terrible.

I'd like to see Ireland keep his position as second striker. As I wrote on Sunday, I thought he had his best ever game for City against Portsmouth. But if we don't need Elano at right back (I'm not sure how that will play out at the moment), I imagine he'll move in there and then it's between Ireland and Vassell on the right.

I'm writing the report for King of the Kippax, but I'll hopefully get something up on here about it late Saturday night or Sunday morning.