Craven Cottage Newsround

I got a note from Dave, reacting to my snippet in Sunday’s Observer.  For those not aware, the Observer rings up supporters after games for their view of what’s just happened.   I’ve done a few of these now, and generally it takes the form of an Observer writer ringing up at 630 ish, having a little chat about the game, then asking for player ratings.   Here’s what Dave had to say:

Ref your content in The Observer today… what game did you watch yesterday?

Unfortunately I see pretty much every Fulham game and you must’ve been watching something else to give Jensen a 5 when Volz got a 7! And as for Lastuvka, he can’t catch a cold and you rate him a 6?!?! I suppose you thought he did okay at Blackburn when he cost us the game there?

Under the current regime there is only one way the club is going and it would benefit if you reflected that in your reporting. We have the apparent luxury of a Manager who was a defender along with a defensive coach / goalkeeper coach who was a former goalkeeper himself. Yet we sign and field awful keepers and can’t defend simple corners or set pieces, whilst the marking and zonal awareness is disgraceful.

I was embarrassed by what I saw yesterday and had similar feelings on both visits to Manchester this season. There needs to be a big change at the club to get the best out of the team. They are not bad players, but they lack coaching and direction… the current management are clueless and inexperienced at best.

If you could report the truth as opposed to a glammed up version of it, then we may see change for the better at the club as the owners realise we, the fans, won’t stand for it. By making the best of a bad situation you are only adding to the general malaise which is afflicting the club presently.

In response to Dave’s comments.

First, let’s get player ratings out of the way.  This is always hard to do: the person from the Observer reads a name and I blurt out a number.  I generally start with a base of 6, and if someone does badly I drop them to a 5, if they do ok they get a 7, and so on up from there depending on how excited I am (I gave Niemi a 10 after the Portsmouth game, which in retrospect was a bit rash because he might have done better for their goal, but from where I sat he had a stormer and I wanted that known!).  On Saturday I thought the team played pretty badly overall, which is why most of them got 5s and 6s.  I gave Volz a 7 because I think he gave everything, was strong in the tackle and got forward well.  I might have been very wrong, but it’s not like I gave him 10/10.  Lastuvka?  Well he couldn’t do a lot about the goals (I think he might, he made a couple of decent saves and saved a penalty.  I think that’s worth a 6.  I’ve seen his performance rated 8 (Sky) and 5 (Guardian), so that shows just how subjective these things can be.  Either way, I don’t think 6 is that far off, and if it is, I don’t see that it’s grounds for getting worked up about.

I think you’re right about the zonal awareness, and I suggested that in the match report I wrote on these pages.  The defenders put in decent individual performances every week, but collectively something is very wrong.  And yeah, this reflects badly on the management.  So I wouldn’t necessarily disagree on the coaching or direction either, we seem to have lulled into an aimless ‘keep it tight and hope something happens’ approach, and again, this is entirely a reflection on the management team and is not a good recipe for success at this level.  (That this is how the England team plays too is neither here nor there.)

But I do have a problem with you asking me to ‘report the truth and not a glammed up version of it’.   You suggest that I’m making the best of a bad situation, and I think that’s reasonable, but don’t talk about ‘truth’.  I’m not involved in Fulham FC propaganda and am as concerned as anyone (read my report below).  But what is the ‘truth’?  Usually somewhere between two polar opinions, which in this case would be (a) Coleman and his team are useless and (b) everything is fine, we’ll start winning any moment now.    There’s a very real chance that this team will get sucked into something messy very soon, as there aren’t many teams playing worse than us this season.    That we’re clear of relegation at the moment is certainly fortunate, given the performances we’ve seen this year (and like you, I’ve seen most of them). 

But I don’t know what the answer is, and I don’t know if Chris Coleman and crew are what the club needs.  Perhaps where you and I differ is that I don’t think the issue is settled one way or another yet.   We’ll see.  I’m not saying you’re wrong about Coleman, Dave, but I’m just not sure that it’s this simple.  Like I say, we’ll see.