Craven Cottage Newsround

Marina Hyde in the Guardian laments the transfer deadline. I can see where she’s coming from: if every name thrown around ended up at the Cottage we’d have a very bloated squad, mainly full of players who have a similar ability to those they’re notionally brought in to replace.

Word was that Newcastle had an interest in Helguson, to which I would ask: why? Oh, he’s not a bad player, but nor is he a good one. If you want someone to run around and look busy and maybe score a goal here and there then yeah, why not? But there are a lot of players who can do that, and with a bit of diligence surely better can be found.

Which brings me to David Nugent, Preston’s celebrated young forward and a player that we’ve been hearing about these last few days. I’d sooner gamble on a player like Nugent, untried at the top level, than on some average but familiar “name” player. Fulham need to do something to persuade the ball to go into the net more often, and a natural goalscorer (I should check this, but as I recall Nugent’s good at goals) is needed to do this.   Whether we find this in Preston, Togo or the lower leagues, I hope we find him.   And let’s thank god again that Wigan dealt with Emile Heskey in the off-season so that others might not have to deal with his ‘menace’, or whatever it is again that he’s supposed to do up front (it’s not scoring goals is it?).

Right, back to deadline day. Who knows what’ll happen, and let’s not forget, if it doesn’t happen now it can still happen in January.

Here’s Marina Hyde to finish off:

Deadlines, it hardly needs a journalist to suggest, are not generally anticipated with eagerness. And yet I cannot recall a cut-off point to which I have looked forward to as much as the stroke of midnight tonight, when the transfer window will shut, with any luck crushing in its steel-framed embrace the fingers of a few players, agents and managers whose vocabulary does not stretch to understanding the word “contract”.

PS If West Ham can bring in Maschereno and Tevez then you have to think Fulham might have found a way to do something on these lines…. ah well.   I have faith…

Steed Malbranque’s time at Fulham is now over. He chose a move to Spurs, who paid Fulham a bargain £2.5 million for the player. He’ll be missed but it’s time to move on.

Rumoured to be coming the other way is former Palace prodigy Wayne Routledge. Some time ago Palace Chairman Simon Jordan wrote some amusing columns in the Guardian. Jordan, a youngish man (by Chairman standards), with a Robbie Savage hair cut and an ego that is second to very few, is very sure of himself and shared his his wisdom with Guardian readers each week. At one point Routledge had been unsettled by Spurs over a long period of time, provoking Jordan to write an excellent piece about agents and the damage they might do to young players. I liked this bit:

It makes sense for Spurs in that a percentage of these recruits will succeed, and plenty of sense for agents, but why do players keep falling for it? It irks me intensely that one of Palace’s best young talents is also in the Tottenham massed ranks right now. I really don’t think Wayne Routledge is going to be playing as much for Spurs as he thinks he will. I told him that, people around him told him to stay and develop longer under Iain Dowie, but we didn’t count - as is so often the case, the teenager trusted his agent.

Jordan was irked because a young player that Palace had nurtured for 8 years was on the verge of rejecting a fairly lucrative deal. This is fair enough, players have freedom these days, but Routledge had made his debut at 16 and played over 100 games for the club and the fans felt a little loyalty was in order.

So there we are. Hopefully Routledge will be able to recapture some of the form that made him such a prize in the first place.

In other rumours, the Guardian has Boa Morte on the way to Spurs too, but I haven’t seen that anywhere else. Simon Davies of Everton is getting talked about a lot on the Fulham Independent boards too.

I don’t seem to be able to let Brown’s tackle on Giggs go. While it’s great to see players committed and yes, aggressive, there’s an obvious line and Brown clearly crossed it. I maintain that any footballer could avoid that sort of challenge if he wishes, and if he doesn’t wish, well you have to wonder about the sort of person you’re dealing with.

Where Brown is concerned I’m just not sure. Here, for example, is his two footed lunge on Portsmouth’s Sean Davis last season:

At the time Sean Davis said that the tackle was deliberate:

“He tried to break my leg,” Davis said. “I know because I saw him look at me and I know he tried to do me. I didn’t want to go down because I didn’t want to show that he hurt me, but he did catch me. I think if I’d gone for (it) a bit more he could have broken my ankle.”

Davis and Brown have what Redknapp, the Portsmouth manager, termed a “history”. “He was at Spurs, I was at Spurs,” Davis said. “He’s only an average player anyway.”

I don’t know what sort of a person Davis is, but clearly they’re not best friends.

So what do we think? Does a team like Fulham need an enforcer? Bouba Diop rules the tricky parts of the pitch, but does so fairly. Is there room for someone like Brown? Whatever he does add to the team, there’s something deeply unpleasant about the two tackles we’ve seen, and it makes it hard to warm to the man. And ideally we’d all like a team full of good players who we want to see play. I hope CC can find the extra midfielder he wants so that Brown finds his rightful home on the bench - Sean Davis was right, he’s no more than an average footballer and we need better.

PS On review, the Giggs tackle (below) is clearly worse.  At least on the Davis lunge he lands where the ball was.  When stamping on Giggs he wasn’t even close to the ball, which was elsewhere.  Anyway, judge for yourselves.

Fulham have been drawn against Wycombe Wanderers from League Two (or division four to put things in perspective).

It could be a banana skin waiting to happen though. Wycombe are playing very well, and have 10 points from their first 5 games and now lie 6th in their division. Their manager, Paul Lambert, is Scottish, which marks him out as being one to watch if we’re going to use broad stereotypes (and why not?). Furthermore, forward Jermaine Easter has 4 goals already, so will be one to watch.
Fulham ought to have a good cup run in them and all things being equal will win this game without too much trouble, but Wycombe will be giving it everything and there will be no room for complacency (saying that, is there ever room for complacency?). Games are w/c 18th September.

There seem to be a number of people searching for Michael Brown’s tackle on Ryan Giggs and ending up at this site. So I might as well stick it up. So here, in all it’s gory, is Michael’s awful tackle. Shame.

Yeah, that was better. Fulham put together a very sound performance yesterday, winning 1-0 but having chances galore to make it more. In the end Jimmy Bullard’s free kick was the difference.

Fulham started very brightly. The team was unchanged but for Collins John’s introduction instead of Helguson. This was the third combination tried in three games, and is probably the pairing that’s looked most effective, although we do have to remember that it was against a Sheffield Utd that Fulham should beat. But John looked fairly lively and even hit the post in the first half. McBride still looks a little isolated though. Fulham, and Rosenior in particular, are still sending too many aerial balls to him that are just being dealt with too easily by defenders. It’s what David Pleat calls ‘coincidence football’, in that if anything comes off it will be more through luck than judgement. And that’s a dangerous way for a top flight team to play.

But they did pretty well. Brown had another tidy enough game, the Wardrobe showed that he has fantastically good control in tight spaces, and was a rock in the midfield. The back four was again sound, with Christanval in particular having a good game (in one stretch of play he had three key interceptions/blocks in about 20 seconds). Liam Rosenior got down the flank well in the first half, definitely his best game of the season.

In the end Fulham were probably a bit too good. The goal came from a free kick that was probably just about the right decision, Jimmy Bullard stepped up and whipped it past a flat footed Kenny into the top corner. In the second half he maintained the high energy levels and thumped a shot against the Hammersmith End goalpost from 25 yards, a shot that came about after Radzinski had messed up when clean through. McBride was also put through in the second half and shot wide, Kenny getting a slight touch that made all the difference.

So a livelier team that now has 4 points from 3 games and is probably fairly happy. Good stuff.

Also worth noting that everyone in the Johnny Haynes stand got a free t-shirt commemorating the man. Nice touch, Fulham, thank you.

FulhamMAD has some heavyweight stats on tomorrow’s game.   This head-to-head stuff is all very well except that these two teams haven’t met since the turn of the century.  However, if we want to put a positive spin on things, and we do, I can reveal that Sheffield Utd have not won at Craven Cottage since 1967!   So home banker it is.

And it has to be.  It’s far too early in the season to talk about ‘must win’ games, but equally there just aren’t going to be many easier games than this.  I’m optimistic though.

Odds and ends/random musings: 

Last year Fulham lost more players to muscle injuries than any other team except Newcastle.   That these two teams (and Portsmouth) were so much higher than others could be put down to bad luck, or down to something else.   Either way, it’s serious stuff.   Presumably each player in the Fulham squad has been acquired for a reason, and each time he’s not available someone else has to fill that role.   Outside the big clubs there’s simply not the depth in squads to be able to deal with injuries, so I don’t know why teams don’t take this side of the game more seriously.  Or put another way, perhaps they do, but I would guess that the costs of dramatically improving the medical facilities would be much lower than the costs of a lot of other expenses incurred by football clubs.  I don’t know, but I think this is something that bears watching this season.

The other reason this might be important is that Fulham has quite an old squad.    If conventional wisdom is right, players get more injuries as they age.   Well, I’ve just worked out that the Fulham squad averages 27 years of age, the team that played Bolton averaged 29, rising to 30 if we exclude spring chicken Rosenior.   Which doesn’t sound ideal.  I don’t know though, perhaps experience will be crucial to the team’s efforts.  We shall see.

This is a picture from the FK Karvan Jeblach website.   Karvan are from Azerbaijan.  The reason I know this is that I’ve been following Slavia Prague for a while (for reasons I’ll go into one day) and they’re playing Karvan in the UEFA cup tonight.   Anyway, they’re doing that stupid baby celebration in Azerbaijan too.

While we might have hoped for a win, any kind of rebound from the Manchester debacle is welcome.   It’s not as if Fulham played particularly well last night, but the whole team played reasonably.   Bullard was very active and is looking like a fan favourite in the making, especially given the last gasp heroics.   Even Michael Brown had a reasonable game.    The defence looked a lot more solid, and while it’s easier to play well against Bolton than a red-hot Man Utd, there was a more reassuring air about the unit. Queudreu in particular looks like a natural footballer - that’s not necessarily the same thing as a good one, but the signs are good.

Anyway, the game.   Fulham looked really handy in the first twenty minutes but there was no end product.  Heider Helguson of all people made a last ditch tackle to rescue a desperate situation when Kevin Davies was clean through, but there were no real scares after that.    Both teams huffed and puffed and there were moments of tidy play, but no real quality.

Looking back I’m struggling to recall any real missed chances.  Ian Pearce headed down and up and over when in a great position, but the Bolton keeper wasn’t really troubled.  Nor was Niemi really, and it became the sort of game where you could catch yourself staring into space but not worry because little of importance had happened while you were away.   One Bolton fan near me was moaning about the seats (I was in the Haynes Stand) and compared the experience to watching paint dry.  I’ve never done the latter so can’t really comment, but I suppose it must have felt like a long way for them to travel for a game like this.   Funnily enough someone else said that the game was live on Al-Jazeera tv, which amused me. 

So yes, the game.  I’m running out of things to say.  The Bolton pen looked harsher on TV than it did in person, but then again all I saw was a lot of movement and a tumble.   Diouf got a lot of abuse all game but tucked his kick away perfectly, but Fulham responded well and had a few near-half-chances after that.   The equalising pen was up the other end and I hadn’t a clue what was going on, but MOTD revealed it to be a clear hand ball and Bullard’s kick was just good enough to earn a draw.   Jonathan Hunt didn’t look like a footballer.  I mean, he played ok, he just didn’t look like a footballer, all slouchy shoulders and bow-legs.   There’s hope for the rest of us, perhaps.  

Team-wise it was fair that Coleman stuck with the same team, less Collins John who stepped down for World Cup hero Brian McBride.  McBride had a better game last night than John did on Sunday, but didn’t really challenge Bolton’s centre-backs too much.  Much of this was a function of Fulham’s sometimes predictable football (long balls really did play into Bolton’s hands) but I can’t help feeling that there’s a real need for a proper forward up there.  Helguson tries but looks that bit short of Premiership class.   The same might be said for Brown and Rosenior down the right, but Rosenior does look to have some promise, even if his distribution is occasionally poor.    Other than that the team looks in fair health, the defence in particular looking far more solid.

A win over Sheffield United on Saturday will make it P3 W1 D1 L1, which would be about par for the course at this stage of the season.   Let’s hope Fulham can build on last night’s improvements and really put something good together at the weekend.  I’m optimistic.

Coleman is putting a positive spin on things:

“We have to make sure we are positive against a tough Bolton side. It took us four matches to get our first win last season but now we can do it in two.”

Fair enough.

Jensen and Pembridge are still out. Physioroom.com has a fantastic injury listing, although Malbranque is listed as being out with a groin injury with ‘no return date’ set. They could have had ‘engaged in strange childish standoff with manager (Coleman: injured nose cut while spiting face)’.

Michael Brown has blisters on his right foot. Good. But he should be fit to play…

The BBC is reporting that Malbranque may now move to West Ham for £2.5 million.

The article makes liberal use of words like “could” and “may”, so they might just be throwing some content up for a laugh, but it’s a move that does make sense, and perhaps Malbranque might want to go to another London club (Newcastle and Villa were the two other teams mentioned, and both would’ve necessitated relocation to some degree).

This has all been a bit of a shame. In America players in the last year of their contract are generally believed to make an extra effort so as to earn that little bit more when it comes to signing a new deal, or simply to attract clubs that weren’t otherwise interested. I don’t know that this would have applied to Steed Malbranque, but I do know that I’d rather he was playing than not.

I worry that Fulham are not good enough to play without a player of Malbranque’s calibre. And while it’s all well and good Coleman sticking to his principles, would we rather get a few more points or not? Humph.

At the end of the article is this quote:

“I’ve been told we can’t buy but I’ve been looking at the position since last season. Selling Steed would release cash for us, maybe enough for two players.”

So here’s hoping.

Update: today’s Independent is reporting that Chris Coleman will listen to reasonable offers for Luis Boa Morte.   If the papers are reporting this presumably Coleman’s trying to drum up some interest.   So we’ll see, but perhaps changes are on the way.

The BBC reports that Fulham have… well, I’ve just said what’s happened in the title.

They were charged for failing to ensure their fans conducted themselves in an orderly fashion and refrained from violent and/or provocative behaviour.

They were also said to have failed to ensure no spectators were allowed to encroach on to the pitch area.

Fulham have until 5 September to respond to the charges.

So there we are.. not really the sort of thing that can be appealed I wouldn’t think. No mention of the penalty, although it doesn’t say anything about docking points or anything.

According to the Guardian today Coleman kept the players in the dressing room for an hour after the game. I don’t know if that includes time for showering and changing, or if he ranted for the full 60 minutes, but clearly the man wasn’t happy.

In the Evening Standard Coleman says:

“They steamrollered us. We hardly got hold of the ball in midfield, and when we did, we gave it away far too easily. We had a game plan, but it went out of the window after 10 minutes…..

the disappointing thing for us is that we didn’t compete.”

Indeed they didn’t. Coleman goes on to talk about a top half finish, and he’s right to be optimistic, but my goodness they’ll have to be better than they were on Sunday.

The Standard also mentions Zat Knight’s absence, but the problems on Sunday were deeper than just one centre-half. He might have helped, he might not, but Fulham were exposed all over the field and only Bouba Diop really looked like a top-flight footballer.

Geoff H at There’s Only One F in Fulham wonders:

“The one consolation is we are better than that performance - aren’t we?”

Well that’s the big question.   The same site offers some fair player ratings, including this about Michael Brown:

Michael Brown; 4 Dismal performance from a player who still has a lot to prove in a Fulham shirt. His lacklustre performance and poor passing were overshadowed by an unforgivable and totally unnecessary potentially career threatening two footed tackle on Ryan Giggs. Exsctly what you would expect from a player who has spent a lot of his career playing up north and it is not the first time we have seen it in the handful of games he has played for us. If you want to carry on like that Michael, Fulham is certainly not the Club for you!

Well I couldn’t agree more.  If you’re going to play like that you’d better have something about you if you’re going to stick around, and I can see no evidence that Brown is a Premiership midfielder.

Ho, it’s only one game. A long way to go. But it would’ve been nice to start well. Mr Mo Mentum can be a tricky blighter to stop.

And it could have been worse. Fulham opted not to defend, and against a Utd team full of quick, attacking players, this proved disasterous. Yesterday Aston Villa went to Highbury with a similar challenge, and lined up four defenders and four midfielders and packed the defensive third of the field. They harried the quicker and better Arsenal players, and came close to pulling off a major shock (they drew 1-1).

Fulham had a back four of Rosenior, Christenval, Pearce and Queudrue. This in itself was not the problem, although they didn’t help things with some awful positional play. What concerns me more is what lay in front, in that Brown, Bouba Diop, Bullard and Boa Morte really offered nothing to help. United simply cut Fulham apart, moving down the wings and into the channels with utter ease. The midfield played reasonably when in possession, but Coleman needs to do something about the defending and fast.

Oddly, the first few minutes were halfway encouraging, with Bouba Diop having a couple of half chances to make an impression. Then Giggs found a lot of space on the left, was hardly challenged, floated a ball onto the edge of the six yard box and celebrated as Saha’s glanced header bounced into the corner of the Fulham net. Saha had not been challenged in his approach, ghosting between Rosenior and Pierce to leave Niemi with little chance.

The second came on a quarter of an hour, as Ian Pearce was unfortunate to divert a low, fizzing Saha cross into his own net from the six yard line. The buildup was similar to the first goal, in that United had time to play and time to get wide and from there everything seemed a bit inevitable. Pearce had to go for the ball and the cross was good enough to force his error. Niemi looked to have saved it but the ball flew through his legs and the game already seemed lost.

The third came as an angled free kick somehow found its way past everyone and allowed Saha a free volley on goal. Niemi kept this out, but was unable to prevent Wayne Rooney from stroking the ball into the net. 3-0.

A minute later the game was definitely over, as again United found space on the left. A looping chip to the far post might have been dealt with by Queudrue, but the new left back waved his left leg at air as the ball dropped to Ronaldo, who scorched a half volley into the roof of the net from eight yards. Again, far too easy.

From here it all got a bit irrelevant. Helguson broke through the middle and scored via a deflection that looped over the ‘keeper, but, well, really, so what?

Scholes could have had a fifth, and later Rooney did. Again, irrelevant. Michael Brown may have been frustrated when he stamped on Ryan Giggs’ leg, but that’s no excuse and his yellow card seemed lenient. He may yet be punished, and deserves to be.

So… that was that. In truth, we can hardly have expected anything from the game, but the utter paucity of effort and the absolutely dire defending does not bode at all well for the season ahead.

On Wednesday Bolton come to Craven Cottage, and should present a different and more comfortable challenge. But Sam Allardyce will have been rubbing his hands with glee after watching this. It’s all very worrying.