Russell Martin having already been sacked but Ivan Juric for some reason remaining uninstalled in the dugout made this the dullest of all the Premier League fixtures of the weekend and quite possibly of the entire season, both on paper and on the pitch.
We can only assume it was selected as a pre-Christmas kindness to those of us who needed the perfect game to fall asleep to, thus earning a much-needed respite from the last-minute shopping, the wrapping, the travelling, and the tedious droning of our most boring and distasteful loved ones. Spurs are on later, everyone, preserve your energy.
Southampton don’t score many goals, while Fulham have made it their business to be boringly competent unless they have a lead to protect this season, somehow both boasting the third-best expected goals against and yet also dropping the most points from winning positions of any team this season.
If ever a game needed a goal to bring it to life, it was this one, but Southampton’s caretaker management were determined to have at least established a slightly more solid foundation for the new manager and Fulham lacked a decisive creative spark in the absence of the injured Emile Smith Rowe.
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Southampton need for Juric to work out above and beyond anything else if they are to have any hope of survival whatsoever this season, but Fulham are in a different position: their January window will be among the more interesting in the Premier League when it comes to assessing how they might fare in the second half of the campaign.
Marco Silva has got them too well-coached, solid and capable to be at any real risk of relegation, but it’s hard to see them pushing on much further than their current upper-mid-table standing unless they are able to add a bit more quality to their side in the final third.
Fulham’s bang-average goalscoring record speaks for itself, and has its role to play in their frequent inability to see games out: it is much too easy for trailing opposition to throw caution to the wind knowing they are unlikely to find the game killed off by an incisive bit of counter-attacking play that extends the Cottagers’ lead.
And that’s to say nothing of Liverpool reportedly standing in the left-back aisle of the January supermarket, weighing up their options and confusedly intoning “Andy Robertson…Antonee Robinson. Andy Robertson…Antonee Robinson”.
That transfer link just makes too much sense to dismiss as outright guff. Robinson has been among the most productive assist-making full-backs in the division this season, while Robertson’s red card in the pulsating ten-man draw against Fulham last week had been in the post for an awfully long time: he has been the clear weak link in an otherwise generally excellent Liverpool side all season, and they sit top of the table more in spite of his presence than because of it.
That loss would be difficult for Fulham fans to accept unless it came at a price sufficient both to replace Robinson and help to provide that extra firepower in the final third. In which case…it honestly might help solve Fulham’s current biggest problem just as much as Liverpool’s.
READ: Seven Liverpool options to replace finished Andy Robertson include Newcastle, Milan defenders
