Sports Blog 14/05/2018: Championship Play-Off Semi-Final 2nd Leg Preview – Fulham vs Derby, Monday 14th May 2018

Can Derby ram their way into the Championship play-off final at the expense of a frustrated Fulham, at 7.45pm on Sky Sports?

The Cottagers messed up at the very last moment in the regular season. With Cardiff drawing their final game against Reading, all Fulham would have needed to secure automatic promotion to the Premier League was a victory over the relegation-flirting Birmingham. Instead the Blues won 3-1, leaving Slavisa Jokanovic’s side 2 points adrift of Cardiff in 3rd place.



Though facing a team who sat 13 points behind them by the season’s close, Fulham carried that sense of regret into their play-off 1st leg. They failed to convert 74% possession into anything tangible, managing a meagre 2 shots on target. Granted, Derby only managed one shot on goal, but they made the most of that opportunity, with Cameron Jerome’s strike just after the half an hour mark gifting the Rams a 1-0 lead heading into the 2nd leg.

Unlike Fulham, whose hopes of skipping the play-offs were dashed at the last minute, Derby have had a bit longer to process their own disappointment. Back in January the Rams were riding high in 2nd place; yet from that point onwards they began to slide down the table, a decline in large part informed by an 8 game winless streak between mid-February and the end of March. Things were looking so bad that with just 3 games to go they were stuck in 7th, and in danger of the Premier League being put beyond reach.

Yet wins over Cardiff and Barnsley, as well as a draw at Aston Villa, pushed Derby over the play-off threshold, with the club finishing 2 points ahead of Preston. Jerome was instrumental during that run-in, scoring 4 goals in 3 games; add onto that his 1st leg heroics, and the 31 year old forward has a Super Mega PGM of 16-20.

Admittedly, that’s a way off Fulham’s Aleksander Mitrovic, who’s at 51-59. The temperamental Serb sits ahead of Ryan Sessegnon, with the English youngster at 22-27 despite having 15 goals to Mitrovic’s 12.

The Cottagers haven’t lost at home since mid-November, and look unlikely to do so here, with Spreadex offering a Fulham/Derby Goal Supremacy spread of 0.8-1 alongside a Total Goals spread of 2.65-2.85, and a Bookings spread of 50-54.