Archive for May 3rd, 2007
Timber!
I mentioned in yesterday’s comments that I was looking forward to the Liverpool match. Well I’m not now. That anticipation is turning into dread at great and frightening speed. Picture a lift with its cables cut and you’ll have a fair idea of how my head is working today. There’s a phrase that appears on the screen during the film La Haine, says something like: It’s not the fall that hurts, but the landing. May 13th in Middlesbrough is going to be unbearable isn’t it? Which is why a result against Liverpool is so important. Sort it out now, lads. Please. I don’t want to have to go up north!
Has any Fulham player scored a goal this season by lifting it over a goalkeeper when put clear by a clever pass? Strange question I know, but I was just wondering. I can’t remember one.
I can’t instil character into players, they’ve either got it or they’ve haven’t. What I can do, as in the case of Northern Ireland was, those who picked and chose when they played and were there for some games and not for ones that didn’t suit them, I made the situation that you were in it or you weren’t in it. Those that were in it for the sake of argument, David Healy who played throughout that complete barren spell of 14 games without a win and 13 games without a goal; he turned up every time when Northern Ireland wasn’t in a good situation and he now is reaping the rewards for staying there. Now some people didn’t turn up during those times, they turned up now and again or when it suited them or when it was at home and what I basically did was cut the players that weren’t in it whole heartedly, and now we’ve got a squad who are in it and they’re reaping the benefits for that.
You find out the ones who are committed to the cause and you keep them and you show them a way of doing things and then you let their natural character come out. I believe all players have a natural character; they just need it to be brought to the surface.
I’ve got to do what I’ve done with Northern Ireland in a very, very short space of time with Fulham. Every day, every moment that I am at the club, I am assessing and looking and viewing.
If the players listen to what we are telling them, try and take that on board, which they are doing and try and carry it out as they can do, then we’ll get results that will surprise people.
This from a league managers association website (subtitle: Football’s greatest minds)
Well the results haven’t really been there but I think I can see a small uptick in something about the players. Sanchez does speak some sense, although I wonder if his idea of ‘character’ is the same as Coleman’s was. I suspect things are a bit tougher for the players now, which may be no bad thing.
Finally, my girlfriend was watching Crime Watch during the football the other day. There was a reconstruction where an off-duty policeman was badly beaten on a late bus in the Ealing area. Four young men handed out the battering for no good reason. Once I’d got over the nastiness of the world (which took some time, these things do upset me), my thoughts returned (as they so often do) to Batman. Is there a place for mysteriously disguised vigilantes in the modern world, I wondered?
But this is supposed to be a football site isn’t it? Relegation struggles will do this.
