Joachim Andersen

There's been a lot of those midweek tyres in the schedule where we've gone... do you know what let's hold on to that there's a bit more of that on Sunday than great or Saturday night and but we haven't always necessarily got the result to match that either at least with Fulham it was the other way around but Yeah, no, forward areas, I didn't think we held up the ball enough.

But bear in mind, this is Fulham playing a high line with Joachim Andersen, who has come in because, you know, he's been dropped because he doesn't fit the way Arbelo likes to play.

I was quite, and again, it did, this was our first warning really of the striker issue that was coming with Fulham.

Um, and Ketia comes off, who's run his socks off, but not really made much kind of effort to do what you've said, Jack, what he was tasked with beyond the goal.

It was those guys in their prime.

He runs across Joachim Andersen and it's just a really good finish into the back of the net.

Was it deserved? Probably not.

Does it matter? No, not really.

But obviously, we mentioned before, we had Dino back and he made a brilliant save and he made quite a few of those in the game.

And we then had even Joachim Andersen had a chance, but he headed it away from the goal on 21 minutes.

So in the crowd, I think we were a bit, I don't know, just riding our luck a bit, weren't we, at the time.

For me, I don't know about everyone else, but I thought, I mean, obviously I wanted to win it.

Yeah, look...

Joachim Andersen I suppose is the other one but you correctly say Affen Gruber when I've seen him he looked very accomplished they could probably do with a left centre back because I think

Bassey

is a ticking time bomb at the best of times and has been very poor against us in recent years and I hope that continues today But look, I think they're strong enough.

And then a few other new names.

Our centre-back, David Affengruber, came in to replace Joachim Andersen, who has been quite sidelined.

And he is very pacey and he is performing well.

And it's nice to have a fast centre-back for a change after...

Joachim Andersen has lots of strengths, but pace is not one.

So are you going to try and put a loan bid in for Mbappe in Jan or Vinicius Junior? Have we got that pool? Have we got that amount of pool?

Yeah, look, it's a lovely place by the river.

And what he did there was pretty inexcusable, to be honest.

Affengruber goes down injured in the next couple of weeks.

like Joachim Andersen is going to have to play we don't have any other options to fill in in that role and so if we are talking about well if you're going to have to drop him in at certain situations you need to keep those kind of players at the very least on the on the fringes of the squad to be able to rotate and be able to fill in those gaps that's part of the reason of depth so if we had not played Joachim Andersen or Benjamin de Komp, let's say, as two examples in this game.

And I appreciate where people are coming from in terms of throw everything at the Carabao Cup.

I get it.

Get on with it.

We just don't do that.

But yeah, I think that if you're going to lay blame here, it's Joachim Andersen not seeing Eden Kertia coming across him from over his shoulder.

He has to be aware of that run.

like Ezza in 2020.

Then in 2021, Olise, Gueye, Joachim Andersen, slightly different type of transfer, but these were much more technical, much more modern players, you know, like because prior to that, it was we'll sign Gary Cahill on a free because he's available and we'll get Andres Townsend.

And, you know, it was just... much more like kind of opportunistic shopping on lower shelves.

But Dougie Friedman really brought in this, um, and using kind of Ezra as a great example of, we will take, we'll take a risk on championship players.

James, do you want to respond to John and his halftime outburst about Oscar Bob, which, fair play to him, he still sent us, which I admire.

I mean, my sort of wider issue is when we spend money in the high 20s and early £30 million for a club like Fulham, I want those players to be... important players I want those players to be big players not necessarily leaders because not everyone's a leader but a leader on the pitch in terms of you know making an impact in the game and you know when you look at the bench or players not making the bench we've got a lot of those players Joachim Andersen, Emile Smith-Rowe, Kevin not making the starting 11 so this is Oscar Bob's chance I do quite like signing players like that in January because it gives them six months to bed in and I think it's maybe just taking him that little bit longer to bed in and I was just trying to look for it now.

I think at the start of last season, a Man City fan made a very, very bold prediction about Oscar Bob, about how good he would be for City last season.

Now, he went on and had no impact, I think, last season for either City or Fulham.

But you're looking at it from a slightly different perspective in that regard.

So with Arbeloa, the question is going to be, does he continue to learn? Is the trajectory continually upwards? And as much as we were talking about the leaks in the press last week, I said it at the time I'll say it again part of me genuinely just believes it's Joachim Andersen not very happy just being like yeah I'll tell you what I'm going to have a little chat with some of my pals or his agent maybe not him but you take my point well

there was that it was actually after we did the podcast there was the article in the Telegraph which

is usually a bit of a death knell