Formed by Hammers supporters Jack Elderton and Callum Goodall to offer their fellow fans in-depth but accessible analysis of their team and its players, Analytics United use performance analysis and data to examine how Fulham’s visit to London Stadium could play out...
Sitting ninth in the table and unbeaten in eight Premier League matches, Fulham are enjoying a fantastic season under Portuguese manager Marco Silva. After steady progress in recent years, the Cottagers entered this campaign hoping to improve on last season’s 13th-place finish, bolstered by the high-profile arrivals of Emile Smith Rowe and Reiss Nelson from Arsenal. Yet, somewhat unexpectedly, it’s been another ex-Arsenal player leading the charge: Alex Iwobi.
Midfielder Iwobi has been in scintillating form, providing support for a resurgent Raúl Jiménez, who appears close to recapturing his best form from his Wolves days. That’s without even mentioning Antonee Robinson, who has arguably been the standout full-back in west London this season, if not the entire league. His relentless energy on the left flank, combining lung-busting recovery runs with general defensive solidity and an incredible seven assists in just 20 matches, has been pivotal to Fulham’s success.
While Silva started the season with a 4-2-3-1 set-up, injuries to right-back Kenny Tete and defensive midfielder Sander Berge forced recent adaptations, leading to line-ups that have at times featured four centre-backs in a system that shifts fluidly between a 4-4-2 and a 3-2-5 shape in possession. Timothy Castagne, playing as a right wing-back, has been key to this shape's success, as his tactical flexibility allows him to alternate between tucking inside to support build-up play, and bombing forward to aid more direct attempts to progress. Crucially, this frees Robinson to maraud up and down the left, maintaining Fulham’s attacking edge.
Regardless of shape, the full-backs are pivotal to Silva’s tactical approach as Fulham progress up the pitch, with an emphasis on accessing the wide areas. Over the summer, Silva secured a crucial asset to execute this vision in Danish centre-back Joachim Andersen, whose exceptional passing range has transformed Fulham’s build-up play. Andersen is outstanding at breaking lines with incisive progressive passes to wingers inside the pitch, ranking in the top 15% of Premier League centre-backs in this metric. He’s equally adept at launching long, lofted diagonals to a surging Robinson on the left flank, averaging 8.8 successful switches per game, which places him in the top 1% of his positional peers. These qualities are instrumental in helping Fulham advance through the middle and final thirds, where they can fully exploit the space created in wide areas.
When it comes to chance creation, Fulham are particularly keen to make use of crosses. With Robinson’s tireless overlapping runs and quality deliveries from players like Andreas Pereira, Tom Cairney and Iwobi, Silva’s men are constantly looking to flood the opposition box. This approach has seen them average the most crosses in the Premier League this season, while ranking fourth for cross reliance, with 28.6% of their passes into the box coming from wide areas. Despite such volume, Fulham have often struggled to generate clear-cut opportunities, sitting below the league average for non-penalty expected goals (NPxG) per 90 and ranking just 15th for shot quality. This inefficiency in chance conversion goes some way towards explaining their nine draws this season, two more than their seven wins.
Defensively, Fulham have been a tough nut to crack, losing just four games so far. Recently, Silva has leaned on a three-centre-back set-up, initially defending in a 4-4-2 shape. In this system, one winger pushes forward to support the striker in the press, with Timothy Castagne operating as a right-back and Calvin Bassey moving wide into the left-back role with Robinson ahead of him. However, Fulham’s press intensity across the pitch is below average, and they quickly transition into a 5-4-1 block to defend in the middle and defensive thirds, dropping Robinson back into a more familiar wing-back role. This structure makes them particularly difficult to break down, as they allow the fourth-fewest touches in their penalty area and the second-fewest penalty box entries via dribbles.
While Fulham can be tough to break down in open play, they do have somewhat of a soft underbelly when it comes to set-pieces. Despite ranking among the bottom five for set-pieces conceded, they’re in the top five for shots conceded from dead-ball situations, suggesting that set-pieces could be a potential weakness to exploit. A big factor here is Fulham’s below-average duelling stats across the board. As a team, they rank fourth-worst in the division for aerial duels, winning just 48.1% on average, with centre-backs Andersen and Bassey both sitting in the bottom 45% for their individual win rates. This is compounded by their tendency to allow 16.8 crosses per match, the eleventh most in the Premier League. With the aerial prowess of the likes of Tomáš Souček, the Hammers could exploit Fulham’s weakness by getting the full-backs forward to deliver dangerous crosses into the box.
Whatever the plan, Silva’s Fulham are a tough side to beat this season. Spurs, Arsenal, Liverpool, Brighton, Bournemouth and Chelsea have all failed to take three points from them in the last six weeks alone. For West Ham to do what those sides couldn’t, they’ll need to match the intensity of Silva’s team, defend their box impeccably, and find those difference-making moments of quality in the final third. A difficult task, yes. But, with players like Maximilian Kilman and Souček leading the aerial charge, West Ham have the quality required to get the job done.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of Analytics United and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of West Ham United.
