One To Watch: Neeskens Kebano

The international break has been and gone and fortunately for us, that means that Birmingham City are back to league action. This week we travel south to Craven Cottage in order to face an inform Fulham side. This game often brings goals and with the attacking threats that both sides have, I think tomorrow will be no different.

As we all can see, Grounds just isn’t the standard that we require at Birmingham City at this current time despite being a very consistent player in previous seasons. Wiggins has come into the squad which will help sure up that left hand side but it takes time to gel with the other members of the back four as well as his winger, so I can see this being a bit of a weak spot against Fulham. Due to this, the player I have selected for the one to watch is Neeskens Kebano; a winger or attacking midfielder.

As a stats lover, I was looking at Fulham’s stats against Blackburn Rovers, just to see which players stood out. Kebano had the joint highest number of successful tackles out of the entire squad which just shows how much he is able to track back. This is a worry for us and it won’t allow us any time on the ball and this may mean that we try a more direct route to Donaldson rather than the flowing football that we craved and received during the 3-0 victory against Norwich. He also had a lot of successful dribbles and therefore had the beating of his man. Now, I am aware that Blackburn aren’t exactly Barcelona, but still, they have decent full backs and it shouldn’t have been that easy but he certainly made it look easy on paper.

I think the worst thing about it would be the fact that Shotton would slot in at right back. Caddis played for the U23’s this week so I am not sure he is in contention for the squad so I must assume that Shotton will play right back with Spector and Morro in the centre. Due to this, it means that Spector has to deal with Matt Smith. Kebano has a wicked cross on him and I fear that Spector often shies out of challenges in the air. Smith, unsurprisingly has won more aerial duels than any of his team mates this season and so this is a risk. We have to stop Kebano getting crosses in and he often switches inside or onto the right flank so we have to be aware of this.

Overall, Kebano is a good player and needs to be stopped but Fulham have really strengthened and they may play a different formation and players against us than they have done in previous matches because we play a different style of football to other teams. Due to this, they may not have two defensive midfielders like they have been doing so maybe there will be space for us to exploit. I fear this will be a tough game but I will predict a draw.