Team Focus: Lack of Consistency in Team Selection Costing Fulham

What a difference a few months make – for both Fulham and their new striker Ross McCormack. The Scot managed his first assist of the season against Cardiff on Saturday to earn his team their first point of the season five games in but that same spark which saw him carry Leeds for most of last season remains absent.

Already it is difficult to envisage him coming close to the 28 he scored last year. He did find the net in the Capital One Cup but constant questions over his exorbitant transfer fee appear to be weighing him down at present despite his insistence otherwise. There are also more fundamental issues which need urgent remedying at Craven Cottage.

Felix Magath would have been sacked long ago under certain chairmen and following Mohamed Al Fayed’s scathing criticism of him in last Friday’s Evening Standard, it’s safe to say that the German manager would never have been appointed under Fayed’s stewardship.

Magath is “an odd man” according to Fayed. “When I was young, there was a cartoon character, Felix the Cat,” he wrote. “Whatever happened to him – whether he was run over on the road to Dover or blown up with dynamite – he just kept on walking. If Fulham’s results do not improve, starting with Cardiff tomorrow, perhaps this particular Felix should follow that cat down the road to Dover and then just keep on walking.”

While off the field there are obvious issues simmering, on the pitch things have been bordering on disastrous – though the Cardiff performance was improved on previous efforts. Already, Magath has used 25 players – 23 from kick-off. In comparison, Wolves, who are heading in the opposite direction, have named the same starting XI in each game since returning to the second tier. The early pace-setters, Nottingham Forest, have had 14 starters.

Only four players have been ever present for Fulham and while the club’s youth structure is admired by so many, Magath has placed too much emphasis on the younger players. Seventeen of the 25 to have appeared so far are 23 and under. In this league, experience is a necessity.

A penny for the thoughts of Scott Parker, at 33 the oldest player in the squad by a scarcely believable three years, one of the four constants and one of the few working components in a faulty system. He is also one of only two players to have scored so far, along with Tim Hoogland, who moved from right-back to central midfield against Cardiff, but needs to have a stronger midfield around him.

And while McCormack is some way off his optimum level of performance, there hasn’t quite been an abundance of good service to him. The constant tinkering from Magath meant there has been no opportunity to build an understanding with his teammates.

He had three shots against Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s team but only hit the target once and, while from a small enough sample size, his shots per game average has dropped by a third compared to last season at Leeds (3.1 to 2).

Magath’s criticism of McCormack’s fitness has also been notable. "He has to improve his fitness and I don't know how long that will take," he said earlier in the season. "Ross came to us with a lack of fitness and not at the beginning of pre-season. He is not at the same level as the rest of the players. I wanted him to be fit when we signed him but at the moment he is not in the right shape." Surely the manager would have been aware of his issues during his medical – why spend such a ludicrous amount if there were issues?

“I’m more than happy to take the stick if I can shut them up at the other end,” McCormack said of fans having a go about his price tag but he has only been adding fuel to their arguments by firing blanks.

He scored 47% of Leeds’s goals last season, the longer he remains on 0% the louder those catcalls from opposition supporters are going to get.

The crowds are beginning to drift away from the banks of the Thames too – even if there were still over 17,000 at Craven Cottage on Saturday. Last season’s game against Cardiff was a sell out. After the international break they travel to Reading and Nottingham Forest – fail to win those and Magath will certainly be following the cat.

How long does Felix Magath have to save his job at Fulham? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below