FA Cup 5th round and a trip to Craven Cottage to play Fulham. Not a new ground for us of course because last year we played them in the Premier League and got a pretty credible 0-0 draw here which of course brought us 1/12 of our seasons points tally. Simon Rusk was the manager that day, in a caretaker role after the sacking of Russell Martin. He was back as a caretaker of course by the end of the season, after the largely pointless reign of Ivan Juric.

Marco Silva was a graceless twat at the end of that game and he also managed the trick when they beat us in the last minute at St Mary’s. He wasn’t happy with us because we set up to defend in both games. He was clearly not impressed that we nicked a point at Fulham. That’s ok though because I wasn’t impressed by him being a massive fucking bellend. The St Mary’s game was one where a common occurrence happened, in that we were in the game until we made substitutions and got weaker, whilst Fulham could bring the likes of Adama Traore and Emile Smith Rowe off the bench to set up and score the goals that won it. Ryan Manning for one will be delighted that Traore has moved on to West Ham, who have taken on the task of stressing that it is all genetics and he never lifted weights or took steroids, or anything like that.

Fulham are an interesting case study into what we might need to do in the event of us finding ourselves back in the Premier League next season. One thing I noticed when we lost the Fulham last season was that virtually all of the players that they had on the pitch had been signed from either other Premier League clubs or from decent sized clubs in Europe. There was Leno and Smith Rowe from Arsenal, Traore and Jimenez from Wolves, Wilson from Bournemouth, Berge from Sheffield United and a host of others. None of them were unknown quantities, plucked from nowhere. Because these players have played rather Premier League clubs, I would imagine their wages were quite high but Fulham knew what they were buying and that allows a manager to plan with confidence for the season ahead. Should it arise, it will be interesting to see if we go more down this route, rather than whatever it was that we did two years ago. Fulham are still recruiting in a similar fashion, with this season seeing the arrival of Oscar Bobb from Manchester City. Would we be prepared to invest in players as heavily as Fulham have done?

With the FA Cup, there always the question of how seriously the teams will take it with regards to changes in their starting XIs. I fully expect us to make some changes and Fulham will do so as well, despite being in the kind of League position that Crystal Palace were in last year when they went on to lift the FA Cup. Fulham haven’t won anything since the 50s, so you would assume that they would be quite keen to have a go at winning a trophy but you never know. Managers from abroad, like Marco Silva, often seem to be not that interested in the FA Cup as it’s all about League position and what it looks like on their CV. Mauricio Pochettino was very much like that when he was our manager.

For us, it’s a good chance for individual players that are out there, to show what they can do against Premier League opponents. We have a few who didn’t do themselves justice in the Premier League last season, so they should be wanting to prove either to us or to any potential new club, that they can handle it. If you can handle it in one off game, then of course you have to prove that you can do it over a number of games and that was the problem for the majority of our squad last year. Some had the occasional good game, but they could never string three games together where they looked like a competent Premier League footballer.

The magnificent Saints away travelling support is certainly taking this game seriously with the initial allocation sold out and the extra allocation sold out as well, meaning that we will have just over 4500 fans at Craven Cottage. Hopefully, that backing is enough for our players to give it a proper go and take our 50 Year FA Cup anniversary on to the last eight.