Craven Cottage Newsround

Yesterday afternoon shifted from a gentle optimism to a hopeless disappointment.

It was all in place:  as I strolled over Putney Bridge my uncertainty about the game started to fade.  I was listening to an old album I hadn’t heard for ages, and it really made me feel good.  Music can do that.  And the more I thought about the game the surer I got.   Reading were going well, but we had Michael Brown back and Coleman was sure to give Collins John a run out.   It would be a tough match, but we’d prevail.

The ground was buzzing.  Reading had travelled in numbers and were making themselves heard, but the Fulham faithful seemed in good spirits too.  The players strolled out and still I was sure of a win.   But things looked a bit wrong from the start.  Nothing serious, but most of the possession was with Reading, and most of the ball was in our half.  So much for charging out of the blocks; we were sleepwalking again.

Then disaster.  Kevin Doyle broke through and Pearce took him down with the goal in sight.  Straight red, and Pearcy made his half-time sprint back to the dressing room a little early.  He got a small ovation from the Johnny Haynes stand, this most honest of footballers is well liked and he looked somewhere between bemused and embarrassed as he jogged off.    Match of the Day replays showed that it was a clear penalty, and that Pearce had denied Doyle a goalscoring opportunity.   Fair enough then, but the one thing I’d add is that it looked like Rosenior had a better angle from which to challenge Doyle.

The penalty was firmly struck and Niemi went the wrong way, so Reading had a 1-0 lead.   Fulham’s response was muted as they attempted to reorganise.  For a time the whites went with three at the back, Knight taking responsibility for the middle of the park and Queudreu tucking inside slightly.  Boa Morte dropped back too, and failed to exploit space in front of him in so doing.   Then disaster again, as Franck injured an ankle.  I didn’t see what happened, but he was in the tunnel later in the game and on crutches, so the news may not be good.

Bocanegra came on and Boa became more of a standard left-back, a position that he performed reasonably well in, with predictable moments of clumsiness and bad-positioning.  But the team failed to recover from these two setbacks and Hahnemann in Reading’s goal only had a couple of nervous moments.  First, the excellent Rosenior broke down the right, his crossing flicking a defender’s head on its way to the far post.  Dipping viciously, McBride had to decide whether to head or volley, and in the end his diving header was saved.   Collins John wriggled into space soon after and poked the ball beyond Hahnemann, but a retreating defender forced the ball away.

From there we didn’t show enough.  The ten men battled well and had most of the play in the second half, but Reading were a big threat on the counter attack and might have scored more goals.  On another day it could’ve been two or three.

So what now?   Trouble has been brewing for a while, and this could be the start of an ugly run:  Arsenal at home will be fiendishly difficult, and it’s hard to see the team coming back from Blackburn and Liverpool with more than a point.  There are worse teams in the Premiership and relegation should still be comfortably avoided, but the team is really in a rut at the moment.  The only home performance of any merit this year was Chelsea, which we lost anyway.   We beat Sheffield Utd reasonably easily but without showing much, and a good half against Everton and another against Charlton are the only other periods that stand out.  Worse, it seems that we’re currently working with about one passing move a game.   The long balls were better yesterday with two players to aim at, but this is still not an approach that opposing defenders find hard to deal with.

Now we seem set to be without Queudreu (3 weeks to a month, Coleman says) and Pearce for an important series of games.  Christenval isn’t quite ready, so even with Bocanegra slipping into the back four, there’s still another hole to fill.  It’ll be interesting to see how that works out.

So doom and gloom then.  I really expected a win yesterday and I’m fairly sure that we would’ve got one if it had stayed 11v11.  Very disappointing.