EFL Championship 2019/20: Fulham vs Cardiff City

Following Brentford’s successful comeback the previous night against Swansea City, this game between Fulham and Cardiff City was to see who could earn the right to face the Bees at Wembley for a place in the Premier League.

Fulham entered the match in an excellent position. Scott Parker’s side came into the game with a 2:0 lead after the first leg in Wales. Fulham also won this respective match in the league just a few weeks back by the same scoreline. There have been, however, questions around them all season and whether they’re fulfilling their potential, especially considering their quality and financial power relative to the rest of the EFL Championship. Cardiff, whilst losing in the first leg, have been one of the in-form teams since the restart, picking up 19 points under Neil Harris.

In this tactical analysis, I will conduct an analysis to look at the tactics of Fulham and Cardiff in this EFL Championship play-off game.

Line-ups
On Monday night the headline news was the complete absence of Aleksander Mitrović for Fulham. Nevertheless, their performance dictated that the Serbian forward was again left out of the squad – perhaps with one ambitious eye on the play-off final Tuesday evening. Bobby Reid, therefore, was chosen to lead the line.

Elsewhere, Cardiff and Harris opted to make three changes. Josh Murphy replaced Nathaniel Mendez-Laing; Danny Ward came in for Robert Glaztel, and Will Vaulks took Lee Tomlin’s place.

Fulham build-up

In his first full season as a head coach, Parker has been associated with retaining possession and playing out from the back in a 4-3-3 formation. Indeed, this continued here with Fulham registering 60% possession.