3. Both Teams Are Relying On One Striker To Save Their Bacon
Both Fulham and Cardiff elected to add to their squads during the January transfer window with the threat of relegation looming. As mentioned, both teams biggest problems are at the back, but they have both elected to attempt to fire themselves out of trouble. The Bluebirds elected to swap Peter Odemwingie for Kenwyne Jones. Something that I thought to be a risky move, in my opinion Odemwingie is the more natural goalscorer of the two. Jones has only scored 13 league goals as a Stoke City player in three and a half years, so I wouldnt be that confident that he has the firepower to get the Welsh club out of trouble. However, I would concede that he has a presence and maybe that is what Cardiff are looking for. Fulham are pinning their hopes on a very different player in the shape of Greek striker Konstantinos Mitroglou, who they signed on an £11m deal. The forward is certainly prolific with 41 league goals in 86 games for previous club Olympiacos, but it remains to be seen if he can adapt to the Premier League in the short time he has to do so; its also worth mentioning that any goals he might score may not matter if Fulham cant improve defensively.
James Kent is a freelance writer published on Yahoo! Sports, Bleacher Report, FTBpro, Bloomberg Sports and many others. He has also been featured in the Daily Telegraph, Zoo Magazine, MSN Sport and the Manchester Evening News.
His role on What Culture is currently to produce compelling football articles that nearly always use of combination of stats and strong opinion. Feel free to connect with James via Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.
