29 Aug 2018 13:10:01
So, I've criticised Hughes for not knowing our best 11. I would actually say that we have one of the hardest squads to work with; we have a lot of depth, but no quality. Each player has their own individual qualities and brings their own unique trait to the squad. This leaves Hughes in a difficult position, does he play what he thinks is his best 11 or does he play, the players that he thinks is needed for his opposition. For example, his team on Saturday seemed like he was going for a pacey attack.
So I've spent some time looking at some stats from last season, to find out who is best at what. A lot of this is just stats taken from other sources, not taking into account the situation or context of each stat.
GK
We had a serious problem with our goalkeeping last season; Forster was our no.1 going into last season. However, mistakes meant he lost his place as no.1.
But actually looking at stats, Forster is the stronger of the 2. McCarthy made 39 saves across 18 appearances with 1.56 saves per goal. Forster on the other hand made 60 saves in 39 appearances with 2.07 saves per goal. And last season for Norwich Gunn made 120 saves in his 44 appearances. Gunn's distribution also ranks higher than both of our GK's last season. He completed 539 passes last season, whereas McCarthy and Forster combined only completed 182 passes.
CB
A tough position to fill in our squad. Since Fonte and VVD, it's a position that we've struggled to fill and get a commanding partnership.
Looking at the stats our best defender is Hoedt. He completed the most clearances, made the most tackles and interesting was the only player that won more tackles than he lost. Our new boy Vestergaard, ranked higher than most of our CB's for his stats. Winning 90 arial duels and making 47 interceptions and 35 blocks.
Vestergaard, is also the most dynamic player. He made an average of 57 passes per 90 last season. The highest in our defence was Hoedt and Yoshida, who made an average of 45 passes per 90.
Full back
This is probably the one position in the squad that lacks depth and the one that we rely on the most. Hughes’ instant change when he first took charge was to play 5-3-2, trying to allow Cedric and Bertrand the chance to push forward and create chances.
In defence, Cedric is the best player for providing clearances with 107 clearances made. He was also the best tackler, like most of our CB’s he lost more tackles than he won. Targett did not rank very well in this area, he lost 71% of his attempted tackles. Bertrand, made the most interceptions, but also gave away a lot more fouls than Cedric and Targett.
Going forward, Targett had a great impact for Fulham as he made 29 key passes, had 14 successful take on’s and created 31 chances. This was a lot higher than Cedric and he played about 1200 minutes less than him. This was also close to Bertrand’s numbers, again, playing half the amount of minutes as he did.
CM
Our most competitive position. We have too many CM’s and last season we saw our spread of CM’s playing an equal amount of time, each player featured for about half of the games. Apart from Romeu who played for most of the season.
As you can imagine, Romeu dominates the defensive stats as he sits in front of our CB’s. He won the most arial duels and made the most tackles and clearances. Ward-Prowse is our worst defensive midfielder. Losing 73% of his tackles, Hojbjerg also lost 74% of his tackles.
Our most frequent passer is Hojbjerg who completed 58 passes per 90mins and Lemina was the most successful passer with 88% of his passes being completed. Lemina also completes much more take on’s than any other players in the team.
In the final third, James Ward Prowse is our best midfielder. He made 33 key passes season and created 35 chances. The second best in our squad.
Attack
This is where we fall short. Our lacks of goals have become a problem and it’s a discussion that we have frequently. Not knowing our best attacker. Our top scorer last season was Austin, who scored 7 goals and took 47 shots. However, he only created 4 chances all season. Gabbiadini had the best strike rate in the squad. He scored 5 goals and only took 20 shots.
However, both of these players barely created any chances. Shane Long created the most chances, he created 19 overall. Sam Gallagher also created 22 chances in the Championship.

1.) 29 Aug 2018
29 Aug 2018 16:45:37
Stats eh?

2.) 29 Aug 2018
29 Aug 2018 17:02:39
Not really stats haha. I took me a while to write up. Struggled to get everything in place. I've just tried to gather who is good at what, who brings what to the squad.

3.) 29 Aug 2018
29 Aug 2018 20:15:33
Targett and Yoshida were excellent last night, Hughes has a problem in how to accommodate them into his starting 11. Feel really sorry for Gabbi, every time he plays he is always the lone striker, really believe if you gave him and Ings 5 games together they would start to pull defences all over the place. We are not that far off being a top 10 team and I do trust Hughes to work out our best starting 11 based on our opponents. We will need to use 22 players over the duration of the season and one or two will excel such as Targett and Gallagher and some will fail such as Hoedt and long that's proffesional team sport.

4.) 30 Aug 2018
30 Aug 2018 09:49:03
I did like Hughes' starting 11 on Tuesday. The only changes I would make is:
McCarthy - Gunn
Vestergaard - Bednarek
Lemina - Davis

Ultimately, it depends on what Hughes wants from his starting 11. The depth of our squad means that we can field a different 11 for every circumstance.