Craven Cottage Newsround

More thoughts from yesterday’s game:

Emirates:  very nice as far as it goes.  Huge, huge, huge.  Bad Fosters at £3.20 a pint, but a decent range of food (cheese and cauliflower pie was available, but had a meal waiting for me at home).   The lad behind the counter was bemused when I asked for chocolate but not to drink: “We have York,” he said.   Padded seats offer legroom that should be industry standard (we tall people suffer enough!).  But not great all in all; it’s a bit like the difference between your favourite old record shop and a massive Virgin Megastore.  The latter has its merits and is rationally better, but the lacks soul you want from these things.

Transport:  bleugh.  We ended up getting a bus from Finsbury Park to King’s Cross.  The tubes were loaded and the stations bursting.  Might’ve been worth waiting for it to die down, but as noted, I had dinner on the table at home…

Fans:  magic, in the second half.  Best moment for me: one of the lads at the back threw his shirt into space when we equalised.  Five minutes later when they scored again he was heard to ask if anyone had a spare t-shirt.  Perhaps you had to be there, but masterful comic timing.  We were extremely loud in that second period and a number of the lads in row 22 or so just kept at it all game long.  Well done them.

Players:  Diop was fantastic and Sanchez really seems to have got into the big man’s head.  Knight was pretty good again, but Christanval seems to have regressed under the new regime.  Is he not appreciating the new manager’s ways?   Niemi was fantastic again, Bocanegra okay, and Liam steady enough.  Volzy got caught up the park for their winner, presumably acting on instructions to bomb on.  Brown had one anonymous half and one stormer, Claus was off the pace, which was to be expected having returned from the wilderness.  Davies was okay but worth his place for the dead balls; his goal was superbly taken.  Radz was better than his pre-Christmas self but perhaps still not quite good enough.  McBride looked tired and lonely, Helguson was better.  Dempsey looked like a new player, smooth on the ball, won a couple of fine attacking headers, looked very much like the missing link some of us have been hoping for.   Please let him play against Liverpool.

The future:  we’re still in the bad stuff.  One freak result from below will send us down I think.

If this season were a cartoon we’d now be hanging onto a clifftop by our fingertips.   A willing but fruitless defeat at Arsenal changes nothing and all it takes is a bad result to happen around us and we’ll lose our grip and scream downwards.

It’s getting that bad.  In today’s first half Fulham were like a fly on a horse’s backside.  Occasionally Arsenal let us play with them, but our presence on the pitch was very much on their terms.  They were playing passes that Fulham wouldn’t even have seen, let alone made.  Arsenal had scored ridiculously early with a nothing goal, Rosenior finding himself alone with Baptista on the far post.  The clumsy Brazilian hardly had to jump and planted his header back and beyond a flat footed Niemi. Terrible start, and where were the centre-backs?  It could’ve been many more as Arsenal sliced through us at will, a combination of poor finishing and Antti Niemi keeping them at bay.  It wasn’t happening.

But Sanchez changed something at half time and Fulham bossed the second period.  Dempsey and Helguson came on and transformed the team’s attacking shape.  Where before McBride and Jensen had been bystanders, the new pair wanted and got the ball, found space and brought others into the game.  Not that it counted for much, but at least we were in the match.  Then with the minutes ticking by Lehmann flapped on the edge of the box and Simon Davies steered the bouncing ball high into the North London air.  Amazingly it fell into the Arsenal net.  Terrific skill.  1-1, parity well earned.

Michael Brown, a different player in the second half, jinked through the now tentative Arsenal defence and forced a god save from Lehmann when through on goal.  Only one team was in it now, roared on by support that was as concerted (in the second half), loud and enthusiastic as we’ve seen all year.  But Arsenal know what they’re doing on the counter-attack, the play was shifted at speed and Adabayor, who had missed a sitter earlier in the game, clipped a shot beyond Niemi for a terrible Arsenal lead.  Gilberto followed this with a rubbing it in penalty for 3-1.  Like Reading, a harsh result but this is a results business.

Piccies:

Non-stop support from the lad in front there…

Big ol’ place:

Dempsey gets two markers… or perhaps they were just nearby.  Still, he did well…

Out west visiting parents for a couple of days.  The big news: West Ham and points deductions.   Could be huge.   Catch you on Sunday and try to relax, eh?

Renata pointed to the landscape and said, “Isn’t that beautiful out there!” I looked out, and she was right.  Beautiful was indeed there.  But I have seen Beautiful many times, and so closed my eyes.Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift

What?  First music, then batman, then mice, now he’s spouting Saul Bellow at us!  This is a football site.

Indeed.  But it’s hard to focus on football.   All we have is a team that’s sliding down a greasy pole into oblivion.  We thought Lawrie Sanchez might turn things around, but there’s been no swift change of form and we’re still in trouble.  Indeed, having been quite excited, it’s hard to think of too many positives.   Sure, we saw Montella start a game for the first time in an eternity, but there’s still no Claus, still no guile, and still safety is something that we’ll achieve more through luck than judgement.

Sanchez has been a funny old bean.  We’ve heard a fair bit about the mess he’s inherited, which I suppose is fair enough.  Anyone in his position might want to make a rod for his own back; it’s his way of saying “well, if I do fail here it’s because things were too far gone to begin with.”  Which might be right.   But until the other day I don’t think we’d heard anything positive from him.   I don’t even remember hearing him saying things like “we’ve a great bunch of lads here” or “these are good players.”  It’s all been quite negative.  It worries me that the players might retreat into their shells and not respond.  

Then this week Sanchez came out with some talk about how he thinks Bouba can be what Patrick Viera was, and that *is* good.  There’s no doubt that Diop has talent.  There’s equally no doubt that the media thinks more of him than they ought to given his performances this year.  It’s the sort of thing that allows you to shift players for more than they’re worth, which is what nearly happened until Bouba nixed a move to Wigan.  But, and it’s a big but, if Sanchez has come in and restored the big man’s confidence, well that has to be good doesn’t it?   That’s what the new manager is meant to do.  Diop and Zat Knight seem to be the early beneficiaries of the managerial change, but we need four or five others to step up like they have.   Who will it be, and when?

Arsenal presents a challenge and a half.  They’re a fizzy young team who can’t be relied upon, but who are, man for man, a good deal better than us.   We need to play them hard, crowd the midfield and hope our set pieces make a difference.  I’m surprisingly positive that this can happen, while acknowledging that a right hiding isn’t out of the question either.   Sunday isn’t quite as exciting as last weekend was - we expected the big turnaround then - but it’s still a massive game.  

The Club is making sensible moves at the moment. Realising that good support at Middlesbrough *could* give the players an extra 1% of mojo, the club is assessing options for getting us all up there. The present solution seems to be a £99 flight from Gatwick airport. Hmmm. That’s a lot of money. Hopefully there’ll be a free coach, or there’s always the pub.

In other news, people seem to keep bumping into Clint Dempsey in Wimbledon Village. They’ve chatted to him and reported the sort of things back that you’d expect them to. As I’ve said a number of times, I can’t for the life of me understand why some people have been so quick to write him off. If it takes Andrey Shevchenko months to settle into a good team while playing every week, why should Clint Dempsey be expected to slip right in when given 10 minutes every three weeks? We all like to think we’re experts, that we can spot a player, I only wish people were a little more balanced when they form these views. We all know how form comes and goes (Brown, Volz, Pearce, Knight have all had massive swings in form in this season), how can we judge a player we’ve hardly seen? Without playing Dempsey won’t get the pace of the game, won’t get his confidence and his match sharpness. I think he’ll come good.

The trouble with doing this site that sometimes you run out of things to say. You scratch your head and end up writing about dead mice. Never mind though, it’s all about results now isn’t it? We just need a win from somewhere. It’s still not obvious where this’ll come from, and I don’t buy the theory that Liverpool will be soft owing to other commitments, but we must hope that something turns up.

Update:  I’d missed this.  Hmm.   Ranieri, eh?  Well, why not?

A few weeks ago we visited my folks out west. We had a lovely time. On the last day we were there we’d spent a lot of time playing with their dogs in the garden, and a by-product of this was that I’d got some.. mess on my trainers. When we got home my girlfriend insisted that they weren’t coming into the flat, so I left them outside the door. There wasn’t much mess on them and I didn’t think it’d be a big deal. But a smell began to develop.

I eventually got around to cleaning them properly. I went down onto the high street with my shoes and a bottle top and scoured out the remaining bits of dried ‘dog waste’. Pleased with myself I presented them to Hady and declared that there would be no more bad smell in the hall. I could see that she had her doubts, not least because there *was* still a bad smell in the hall, but I was sure that’d go soon. But it didn’t.

It confused us both. Me because I’d cleaned the shoes, Hade because her sense of what should smell (dirty trainers) and what shouldn’t (clean trainers) was being brought into question. Then she met the girl next door out there. This girl is very nice, very proper, and not one to leave things around that make the place stink. And she had just been on holiday in Cuba for two weeks, so the smell was new to her. “What’s that?” she asked. Hade was embarrassed but feigned ignorance. “We don’t know,” she said. “Hopefully it’ll go soon.” Secretly Hade still thought it was my trainers; perhaps they’d ingrained a smell into the carpet or something. She vowed to steam clean it at the weekend.

Anyway, to cut a bad story short, last night we met the girl from next door again. “Oh,” she says. “I found what the smell was!” “Really?” we both say. “Yes. There was a dead mouse in the wooden box by my door! It was basically mummified.” “Oh!” we said. When we got back we burst out laughing. I fetched my trainers and told them they were forgiven, the smell had gone, and we all realised how wrong we’d been.

There is no moral to this story. I’m not that pretentious. Or is there? Am I? Who knows. Football writing returns tomorrow!

Well that was that then.  After all the hoopla about the most important game we’ve had for years, a victory seemed to be all but inevitable didn’t it?  Especially when Montella poached that early goal.  But reality has a nasty habit of intruding on euphoria and soon Blackburn restored order.   I spent the buildup to the game feeling as if I’d swallowed a live snake but this passed as soon as I got to the ground.   Then it was all about business.  Sad that it didn’t work out as we’d all hoped, but perhaps a point isn’t so bad.  

That night I was asked if we’d go down and I couldn’t answer.  I put my head in my hands and closed my eyes.  “I don’t know,” I said.  “It’s too close.  I just don’t know.”  And I’m none the wiser now.  What I would say is that I’d still rather be us than any Charlton or West Ham, and - this is revelatory - I really can’t see us going down.  By that I mean that I can’t visualise a table with Fulham in the bottom three.  Sure it could well happen, I just can’t *see* it.  I guess it’s the same thing that keeps us all from throwing ourselves of bridges at the futility of life in general: the feeling that everything will be okay, one way or another.  And if it isn’t, well it’ll be okay anyway.   Woops, that got a bit heavy.  And confusing.  

On we go.  This from the Times last week:

“I wouldn’t call it complacency,” Sanchez said. “The players just thought the points would come. The situation probably crept up on them, but you can’t rely on the feeling that everything will be all right because I can guarantee it won’t be all right if we stay on 35 points. If it was all right, I wouldn’t be here.”

He’s certainly come in all guns blazing hasn’t he?  He has also talked about going back to basics and painting a rather worrying picture of the Coleman regime.  How much of this is real and how much is bluster we can’t know, but it may be that the players aren’t quite sure about it all.  They, after all, felt that things were going okay.  Now they’re being told that this was far from the case. 

It’s a point I’ve made before, but one worth repeating, I think.  Can we expect the players to engage and suddenly turn around six months of bad momentum?  No.  But there are umpteen small things he might be able to sort out, including the frightening Farcical Goal Syndrome we’ve suffered from this year.  Just saving us one or two goals in the next three matches could save our bacon, and if Sanchez can instill a few good organising thoughts back there this might not be out of the question.  We could easily have been battered on Saturday, so perhaps the draw is a testament to something from the training pitch.

Or not, who knows?  I did think the team played quite well in the first half, but was taken to the cleaners after that.  It seems now that the main objective of Sunday is to avoid a 7-0 defeat, which sounds negative but if there’s one team you don’t want at this point of the season it’s Arsenal.  They’re terribly inconsistent, but if everything clicks we could be in trouble and have our carefully cultivated goal-difference vandalised beyond recognition.  Yipes.

Slavia lost at home to Plzen, ending a long run of success that has seen them top the league.  But that’s not why I’ve posted this.  Look at the kits!  When was the last time we saw two teams wearing anything like the same colour in the Prem?   Any slight conflict and out comes the away kit (greater exposure = more sales?).

Another must win game without a win, and things are starting to look bad.

Lawrie Sanchez was able to do something his predecessor never could and started with Vincenzo Montella up front. The Italian has that Lineker-like ability to find space in the six yard box and took advantage early on when turning in a Diop header from a corner. The corner had been won following sterling work from Radzinski on the left. The lead was deserved.

But Fulham failed to build on this and soon were thankful for Antti Niemi’s agility, the Finn saving acrobatically from a Rosenior defensive header, and again from a Pedersen free-kick. Terrific work. Then he *was* beaten when McCarthy slipped the ball over him when clean through, but Zat Knight, recalled and rejuvenated under Sanchez, rescued the ball from the goal-line. We were starting to hang on.

The second half offered no let up as Bentley drove Blackburn forward and McCarthy’s menace grew by the moment. First he battered the Fulham crossbar from 25 yards. Then he did score, as overlapping fullback Warnock got by Rosenior down the left, progressed to the box and whipped the ball across for the Blackburn forward to swing home from six yards. In the minutes before the goal Blackburn had missed good chances; it was a deserved equaliser.

Fulham couldn’t find the extra gear to get back into the match, and with Montella, Christanval and Radzinski removed the team lost whatever flow it had. Brown shot over when well placed, Davies - with clear sight of goal from the edge of the box- fired low but straight at Friedel, but despite some pressure the Whites lacked the craft to break through. Meanwhile Blackburn were a constant concern on the break. When the final whistle there was a sense of disappointment and relief, which may be contradictory but with the hopes - and lets face it, needs - going into today anything other than a win *was* going to be disappointing.

So on it goes. Arsenal? Liverpool? It’s going to be hard isn’t it?

The lads come out to a cracking atmosphere, maintained for the duration of the game:

Zat Knight, who with Diop was one of the better players, stops for a drink:

Niemie, who was excellent, watches and catches:

And here he watches the ball kiss the post. The offside flag was up anyway:

“Without warning it comes… crashing through the window of your study… and mine… I have seen it before… somewhere …it frightened me… as a boy… frightened me… yes, Father. I shall become a bat.“

- Bruce Wayne

Indeed.   Tomorrow is nearly here, folks.   I’m petrified.

Do you think the Fulham players are briefed before each Fulhamfc.com interview? Do you think they sit down in that place that always seemed to give Cookie a sniffy nose and reel off some improvised riff to some marketing aspiranto, which is promptly typed up and posted for the world to see? I only ask because we’ve had four interviews this week and they’ve all had a bit about this and a bit about that, but all mention the fans:

“I know the Fulham fans will have most of the Putney End so we need them all to get behind us, be as loud as possible and be the 12th man” said sometime fan target Zat Knight

“If the fans get behind the team like they did at Reading last week, it should be a special atmosphere” said hobbling angler, Jimmy Bullard, adored by fans and injured before the team got bad

“It makes such a massive difference. I can’t explain how important it is to have the fans behind us and they were fantastic against Reading. They out-sang the Reading fans and that’s what we need on Saturday against Blackburn –- everyone is in it together from now until the end of the season and we get what we want” said Liam Rosenior, admired by fans for his dedicated and commitment, but subject of oddest anti-Fulham post-match chant of the year in Wigan

“It’s great motivation, you could see the look on the lads’ faces when they saw the support” said captain and workhorse Michael Brown

There’s a message coming through isn’t there?  The lads are right, we do have to get behind them on Saturday. Trouble is, I’m bricking it and will most likely be sitting there in a nervous trance, but hopefully I’ll get a good early shout in to break my own ice and we’ll see how it goes from there. Scary stuff though, eh?

Blackburn are a weird team to worry about, in so far as they’ve had a losing streak, they’ve played twice since we last did, and they’re not *that* good.  But equally they now think they can get into Europe, they dismantled Watford without too much trouble last night (we couldn’t do that in two goes) and will feel that Fulham are a team they can beat too.   They have no away fans coming though, as Zat says, so that’s where we come in.   Roar! etc.  COYW!  Please….

Things are creeping in the right direction…

Vivian: I don’t like your manners.
Marlowe: And I’m not crazy about yours. I didn’t ask to see you. I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners, I don’t like them myself. They are pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings. 

From The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler

The first time Lawrie Sanchez confronted the press as Fulham manager I sensed something different about the man.  Used to the sniffling platitudes of unravelling nice-guy Chris Coleman, Sanchez’s direct and honest answers to what could have been awkward questions were quite refreshing.   And he’s brighter than the average football manager, and he knows it.   I was trying to think of who he reminded me of.  Then last night, in between my first attempt at sleep (interrupted by a weird screeching sound at the window) and the second, successful one, it came to me:  Philip Marlowe.

Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s fictional private eye, is an honest man.  His whole schtick is his integrity in a world that seriously lacks it.   He’s a good man dealing with people (in crime and crime prevention) who are more powerful but less worthy, and his intelligence and wit shines like the early morning sun rising through the Bay City smog.  He spends his evenings re-enacting old chess games; he has had drink issues; he actively sets himself apart from many of the women who are drawn to him.  He is a man apart who cuts through the crap and sorts things out.

“Kissing you is nice,” he tells her, “but your father didn’t hire me to sleep with you. . . . The first time we met I told you I was a detective. Get it through your lovely head. I work at it, lady, I don’t play at it.”

You can see this in Sanchez can’t you?  He was reputedly an outsider in Wimbledon’s old Crazy Gang dressing room, yet stood his ground in conflicts with such strong personalities as John Fashanu and Vinnie Jones.   He was an average player -  one who studied for an economics degree while playing - but had a couple of notable successes (not least his 1988 FA Cup winning goal against overwhelming favourites Liverpool) and moved into management without a great fanfare.  Maybe Wycombe wasn’t ready for him, maybe he wasn’t ready for Wycombe, it sort of worked out and sort of didn’t.  Word was that he overstayed his welcome. 

Then he moved to Northern Ireland.  Underdogs, outsiders, he turned a certified shambles into a team that became capable of beating far stronger organisations.  For every Northern Ireland victory over England, Sweden, Spain, think of Marlowe smuggling himself onto Laird Brunette’s offshore gambling boat in Farewell My Lovely, getting beaten unconscious, being shot full of dope and held in a weird and mysterious private prison, being mistreated by dodgy Bay City cops who are supposed to be on the same side, but bouncing back to track down Moose Malloy and still work out what the hell’s been happening around him.  All while putting his client’s needs before his own.

This is Lawrie Sanchez.  There’s a mess on Stevenage Road and someone has to fix it.  It’ll take blood, sweat and tears, but also deep thought and cunning.  Maybe Sanchez can help.  COYW!

Well, well, well. Just to prove that games in hand mean nothing when they’re against Man Utd, Sheffield Utd are losing. So that’s good. Meanwhile, I don’t know about you, but I can’t stop thinking about Saturday. It’s like exams in a way, something you can’t ignore at any point until it’s over with, something that you can’t stop thinking about, and something that’ll either be sweet or awful, depending on what happens during the time you’re in there.

The good news is that Lawrie Sanchez will have had a whole week to eradicate defensive miscalculations, to get to know his squad, and to construct the Project Blackburn master plan. I said it’s like exams above, but that’s not true is it? I can’t wait for Saturday.

Neither can Michael Brown. He has, say the club, issued a “rallying cry” which may or may not be like an All Black Haka. The article starts as follows:

With the season entering its closing stages Fulham’s Captain, Michael Brown has issued a rallying call to supporters ahead of Saturday’s crunch match against Blackburn Rovers at Craven Cottage. (Buy Tickets|)

Subtle, eh? Words words words (Buy Tickets). There then follows some encouraging words about our support and an acknowledgement of how he can’t stop thinking about the league position, results, tables, etc. Indeed. Frankly I don’t know how they can play, I’d be in bits, but I’m not made of “the right stuff” and they are. I hope.

Elsewhere, good news for those of us who are hoping to go to Switzerland or Austria next year. The lottery is finally underway. We’ve applied for Czech Republic tickets, having enjoyed ourselves in Prague so much last year. England? Nah. What’s the point? You’ll be stigmatized when you’re there and I’ve given up on the players. We’ll be Czechs for the trip, if we get through the ticket lottery. We’ll know soon enough.

Righto. I’m supposed to be doing something worthwhile but can’t remember what. This run in is getting to me I guess.

(oh, I forgot to say, it’s really good reading your comments, brings different angles to things.  So if you visit here regularly, do feel free to have your say… that was all - cheers!)

Is there a pattern?  Hmmm.  Well… that was the first time we’ve lost three on the trot in the league.  There is a sequence there that suggests a Fulham win next, but I’m not sad enough to start grasping at those straws just yet.