Craven Cottage Newsround

As discussed, Michael Brown has gone to Wigan.

His new manager said this:

“Like all of our signings we have done extensive research on the player and I feel he is someone who brings something new to the table,” Hutchings told the club’s official website.

“We have worked really hard behind the scenes to make this one happen because I believe he will make a big difference to the side and I am really happy Michael has agreed to join us.

“He has huge Premier League experience and is an all-action player who can play a number of roles in the middle of the park.

“He is a totally committed midfielder, who never gives anything less than 100 per cent to the cause and strengthens competition in those midfield areas even further.

“He has been a real fan’s favourite everywhere he has gone and I’m sure it will be no different here.”

Which seems fair. I’m not sure what he means by “a number of roles” but I would imagine he’ll be a fan’s favourite. Good luck, Michael.

Cork’s Roy O’Donovan has been wooed by Petty and Vengeful Cork Legend Roy Keane so the deal may well be off. Oh well. He was one for the future anyway. If Sunderland want him, through spite or otherwise (no, I don’t mean that… do I? The Chris Baird thing might still rankle) then good luck to them.

We’re supposedly in for Watford’s Bouzza but I wonder if now we’re not getting towards overkill. True, the left side of our midfield is somewhat weak, but QPR seemed devastated to lose Lee Cook so he should be okay. Dempsey’s been out there pre-season too, so it’s a weakness that won’t kill us for now. But just to be safe, we’re also rumoured to be in for Le Tallec (Liverpool, via Sunderland and.. I want to say Sochaux), Seol Kyi-Hyeon (Reading) and Charles N’Zogbia (Newcastle) so one way or another you have to think we’ll find an answer. Let’s hope Lawrie’s careful and doesn’t end up with all of them.

Chopper has this and other news well covered. He’s on a daily beat these days so you should be there every day too.

In home news we have many moths. Hady is plotting their downfall. Jim Dodge, a writer and poet from California, once said that the only reason to kill a critter is if you want to eat it or if it wants to eat you. But what if it wants to eat your clothes? Or if you suspect it of wanting to eat your clothes? What then?

Let’s talk about Simon Davies.  The Welsh midfielder was one of the last Coleman signings and his arrival was met with surprising antipathy.  He didn’t really seem needed either.

But into the team he went and sure enough people weren’t very impressed.  I was though. While not obviously an impact player, Davies did the midfield knitting, which is to say that he took the ball and recycled it efficiently over and over.  I remarked at the time that it was weird seeing a Fulham player consistently pass to a teammate.  The passes weren’t hurting anyone, but better to keep the ball than not, right?   This is what the Italians do I think, pass the ball around through Pirlo and Gattuso and their friends and gradually pull defences out of position.   Well nobody will mistake Simon Davies for either of those two, but he did keep the ball.

Not good enough for some.  They wanted pace, dynamism, aggression.  Davies lacks all three.  But he was contributing.  I’m going to repeat my new favourite truism, that football is all about goals: you need to score them and not concede them.  Nothing else matters.   Well look at what Simon Davies did at the end of the year.  He scored at Arsenal (a very nice strike) and again at Boro (opportunism).  And he seemed to make half the goals we scored in that period, forming a fine link with the prolific Bocanegra.   Davies’ right foot crosses were the nearest thing last year’s Fulham team ever got to “a weapon”.

Despite all this I sort of forgot about him this off-season.  Clint Dempsey, my favourite Fulham player, would presumably start on the right.  Steve Davis would partner one of Diop and Smertin in the middle, and this Lee Cook fellow would play on the left.  Whither Simon Davies?

The team!  Lawrie Sanchez had not forgotten the Welshman’s late season contribution, and has played him in this year’s pre-season friendlies.  To great effect as well:  Davies has been outstanding (they say - I haven’t seen any of it).

Which is nice.  I have a feeling he’ll be this year’s Radzinski, a player who underwhelms even his staunchest supporters, but equally, I am increasingly encouraged that he’ll do a good job for the team.

More on the South China win in The Mirror:

Healy, handed his first start since a summer move from Leeds, struck with a superb diving header from an Alexie Smertin cross.

Delighted Sanchez said: “I told David to relax. He had been trying too hard. It was probably the hardest chance he has had all pre-season.”

Good for Healy. Strikers thrive on goals and it’ll be nice for him to have got off the mark. I don’t know where he fits into Sanchez’s plans - it looks like McBride and Kamara are Plan A - but he’s a nice player to have around.

Didn’t see this one coming: The People say that we’re in for none other than Sean Davis!

It’s probably all made up and we don’t really need him now, but interesting to ponder. Perhaps that’s why Sanchez is moving Browny along?  (he says mischievously)

Our TFI moles haven’t heard anything of this so I’m 99% sure it’s just creative journalism.

Aha! South China may not be the greatest side in the world, but 4-1 wins are to be taken wherever they can be found. Well done the lads.

It looks like Lawrie fielded a sort of reserve team, as you can see here. Boca and Smertin and Bouba might get more first team action than the rest, and Niemi is first choice of course, but nice for the rest of the lads to get a run out.

You’ll note that Liam was in midfield again. The merits of this have been debated to death on TFI with most coming out on the side of “Liam’s a good defender”, but I think this is a positive move. As you know, we did a book on last season and reading through my notes and match reports for that book it’s striking how often Liam is mentioned, and not for the right reasons. This is just my view of things, of course, but ignoring the distribution thing, I think he is positionally suspect and prone to lapses in concentration. He has great gifts athletically and seems to be a terrific lad with a future in the game, but he makes me nervous at right back. This is an argument that is without a solution, but that’s my take, for whatever it’s worth.

The point was that as a wide midfielder he could be quite good. He has the pace, the intelligence and with more passing options presumably he’ll be less hesitant on the ball. That was a problem last year, he’d get the ball on the touchline just inside his own half, nobody would be free, so the ball went to nobody. A more dynamic and free role in midfield could be just what he needs. Or it could be a trick by Sanchez to get him to concentrate more on his play in possession without having to worry about defending for a while. We won’t know until the team is announced for Arsenal.

Anyway. My mum and dad are up for the weekend so maybe no more posting until Monday (unless BQ’s back from his holiday). We’re going to the theatre this afternoon, coming back for a curry and then going to see the Barnes Wetlands tomorrow. Cool.

Oh, and Chopper’s sad to see Michael Brown go too.  Pretty much my thoughts exactly.

The Franck Queudrue situation bears some consideration at this point, I think.    Last year he joined the club to some excitement.   Nobody expected him to be a world beater but he was a player of some pedigree, having done a decent job for Middlesbrough since arriving in England.   I thought he did okay for us too.    It is often said that he lacks pace, and the roasting Dennis Rommedahl gave him at the Cottage would attest to that, but I don’t recall him being burned very often.

His defensive play always seemed fine to me.   I don’t know that I’ve ever seen someone commit so early to a tackle: Franck liked to dive in, and, if the ball arrived at a slightly different height to that which he’d expected, well, never mind.  Up went the leg at a strange angle, or down went the head, or whatever it took.   Franck would find a way round or through the attacker and usually got the ball.   He was fun to watch like that.   Good in the air too.   I felt he was a handy defender.

He didn’t deliver as much as we might have hoped going forwards though.  The passes could be inspired or wild.  Sometimes he just seemed to be belting the ball the way he was facing, with predictably unpredictable consequences.   At home to Spurs he played a couple of wonderful passes behind the defenders and into the box, but I don’t recall him setting much else up.  He did score a goal, a very important one at Charlton, but there were no free-kicks, no long range efforts to speak of.   A header cleared off the line at Upton Park was about it.

All this added up to a fun player to watch but one who, perhaps, wasn’t giving us quite as much as was hoped or expected.  He got injured and then played a stinker at Reading in Lawrie Sanchez’s first match in charge.  Nothing went right for him that day and perhaps it was the beginning of the end for him at Fulham.  We saw stories in the press about him being interested in other options, in him being unsure about the brand of football we’d be playing (”musical differences”), and then it did seem likely that he would be on his way.

Now we have a further twist.  I haven’t a source to hand, but it has, apparantly, been agreed that while he’s here he’ll get his head down and fight for his place (Coleman’s doghouse may have been shipped to Spain).  Paul Konchesky is the man in possession now but that need not be the case all year.   It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.    I like Franck, he’s been one of my favourite players to watch so I hope he sticks around.   We’ll see.

More twaddle about this and that.   Brian McBride has given an interview and it’s been spun out by the Mail (Sanchez will raise roof at Cottage), Sky (McBride in confident mood) and on the offal.

Otherwise, we learn that Michael Brown is umming and arring over the move to Wigan, with Sanchez saying that Brownie’s still captain but that the offer was too good to turn down for a player of his age.  See the Mail link above for more.

Finally, we have signed Roy O’Donovan.   He will be loaned back to Cork City until the end of November.   I know nothing of O’Donovan yet.

More on yesterday’s game… from The Arab Times of all places:

With eight new signings starting in humid conditions, it was ex-Aston Villa man Steven Davis who almost broke the deadlock after an intelligent Alexei Smertin backheel. Davis picked out the unmarked Dempsey from the right on 43 minutes but the midfielder’s point-blank header was straight at James. The former Liverpool man denied Dempsey again almost immediately afterwards when he tipped his shot round the post. But Portsmouth landed a sucker-punch on the stroke of half-time when Nico Kranjcar’s speculative shot was parried by Zat Knight into the path of Mwaruwari, who gratefully buried the easy chance. Fulham’s six-million-pound striker Kamara stole in to the six-yard box on 56 minutes but James again saved brilliantly by diving at his feet before stopping Papa Diop’s effort from distance.

So it sounds like we did okay. I agree that David James is the best ‘keeper in the country. Sadly for every weird goal he lets in people don’t see the 10 saves he makes that other keepers wouldn’t have got near (exaggeration of course,but the general point stands). But managers will always take a mediocre but safe looking goalkeeper over an excellent but scary one. Or not always, but usually.

There we are. Brown to Wigan confirmed at £2.4 million plus more if Wigan stay up. It’ll be nice to welcome him back to the Cottage and I hope everyone gives him a good reception. He gave his all for the team and is sure to be popular at Wigan. Good luck, Michael.

Squad numbers now free:

1 (Crossley)
4 (Queudrue may be on his way)
5 (Christanval may be on his way)
8 (Brown)
9 (Helguson)
10 (Runstrom)
11 (Montella)

Nice to have some low numbers available. The traditionalist in me likes to see the first team in proper numbers.

News from the squad:  Simon Davies on the tour so far and Aaron Hughes on same.

(Finally, are you a new reader?  I seem to have found a small but significant number of people searching for the site.   Where did you come from?) 

I was in Bristol today so no opportunity to sneak over to the pub for secret football action.   I now know that we lost 1-0 to Portsmouth, despite having good chances (our boy Deuce could’ve had a couple I hear).

Here’s the Sky Sports report.

Here’s the Fulham reaction.

And here’s confirmation that Michael Brown is talking to Wigan.

So there we go.  Kamara’s night out with the cup proved premature after all.  Now we play South China on Friday in the 3rd/4th place playoff.

Back to the day’s events then.  First, anyone watch?  What did you see?  Balanced opinion is hard to find a lot of the time so I’d appreciate any viewpoints.

Second, the team:  Warner-Baird-Knight-Hughes-Konchesky-Davies-Smertin-Davis-Dempsey-McBride-Kamara

I would guess that Lee Cook will be in contention for a place as soon as he’s fit, but that this isn’t far from Sanchez’s idea of his best lineup (Niemi excepted).   Dunno what that means really.   Good?  I suppose so.   We just need the real games to start don’t we?

As discussed yesterday, Michael Brown is almost certainly on his way.   The papers have the story today.  The Daily Mail’s story is told around quite a good action photo which I have copied for your viewing pleasure:

Summed him up I think.

Lawrie Sanchez, whose previous press conference poker face did not fool this observer for one moment, said:

“Michael Brown is not with us on this tour, in this moment in time he is talking to another club and discussions are ongoing.”

That’ll be Wigan, we understand.  Or Sheffield perhaps, but probably Wigan.

So there we are.   Mentioned but not discussed yet is Fulham’s presence in Hong Kong.   They are on tour and participating in some half-baked tournament or other, a tournament that implausibly features Liverpool, Fulham, Portsmouth and a local side.   All in all it’s a good excuse to run around under the pretence of meaningfulness (which is all any of us do anyway, no? What?  Sorry)

The offal has more details.  Click on that link and you’ll see Diomansy Kamara taking the trophy out with him at night.   Was this sanctioned by the organisers?   If not our new centre-forward may find himself in “hot water”.

On the photo above this you’ll see Brian McBride with the other two Premiership captains.  It was this that first tipped alert supporters off to Brown’s absence.   McBride is, of course, about as good an ambassador as a team could hope for, but I don’t know that I’d make him captain.   It assumes selection for one thing, which is dangerous with players of that age.  Still, good man.

Finally - and this has been exhaustive hasn’t it? -  the offal also tells us that left-winger Lee Cook is not in Hong Kong because he has an injury that’ll need another week to recover.   His debut?   QPR away, in all likelihood.

Bjorn Runstrom is on his way to Kaiserslautern. The Sweden forward promised much but delivered little. It is likely that we didn’t see the best of Bjorn, but at this point it’s almost impossible to see him getting games for Fulham, much less goals. So another one bites the dust, as they say.

Another player who could be on the way is skipper Michael Brown. Brown was not in the squad for last week’s away win at Brighton. At the same time there were rumours of him being in Wigan, or possibly Sheffield (where he has previously been very successful and popular). Opinions of Brown have never been easy to gauge: he had made a couple of dangerous challenges (on Sean Davis and Ryan Giggs) before really establishing himself in a Fulham shirt, but gradually his energy and passion won the fans over. When the time came for Cookie to select a new captain Brown seemed a reasonable choice. And so it proved. Under his watch the team went on a long unbeaten run (no wins either, if we’re being sensible) and there seemed to be a steel about the side. He and Moritz Volz were pretty good in the engine room for a while.

He reminds me of an old metro I used to drive. This was while Hady was at university up north, so every friday night I’d make a 150 mile trip to see her, then make the same journey back down on the sunday. The metro was small and not fast, but being young and foolish and in no mood to spend my life on motorways, I pushed it to the limit, frequently haring down the motorways late on Sundays with a shaking steering wheel and tinny stereo for company.

Needless to say eventually the car stopped playing along with all this. There were weird creaking noises that no garage was ever able to identify. One weekend in Bournemouth the creaking was audible to the general public, more of a tired groan. I briefly got a better job and decided to upgrade (to a Ford Fiesta!).

The same happened to Brown really. It’s perhaps harsh to compare him to a mini metro, but he was never a highly tuned sportscar like Thierry Henry. He did very well for what he was but all that effort caught up with him in the end, and towards the end of the season the games started to pass him by, his closing down became a fraction later than it needed to be, and, despite a number of tries, he never did score. I loved what Michael Brown did for Fulham last year, but a lot of people seem to have turned against him now. Certainly we have better options (you can’t see him getting selected ahead of Diop, David or Smertin, at least not on merit) and Sanchez’s answer in a recent press conference (”Who will be your captain?” “Michael Brown is club captain now” (or somesuch)) was that of an intelligent man being slightly evasive, as if to say “yeah, he’s my captain now, but won’t be when I sell him”.

It could be that I’ve read a lot into not much there, but the speculators usually know their stuff these days and a move north for Browny wouldn’t really suprise anyone. Like Franck Queudrue, who is also likely to leave, he had a good and committed season at the club, but perhaps didn’t show enough quality to get us where we want to be. As ever, time will tell.

Heidar Helguson is on his way.  Bolton manager Sammy Lee sees a role for the belligerent Icelander at Bolton and has paid good money to take him Up North.  My birthday game this year is Bolton away so this’ll make the trip somewhat bearable.

Because I like Heidar.   He’s not a big player but he’s big in the air.   He plays every game like an angry bull, charging into tackles with a recklessness not often seen on modern football fields.   This leads to cards, but also endears him to supporters who appreciate a player who’s given everything he’s got for the team.   He must be hell to play against.

One of my enduring memories of last season is the 0-0 home game against Watford.  It was a game we had no business not winning, but despite throwing the kitchen sink and Collins John at them, we found no way past Ben Foster.   That’s not quite right:  we scored twice and Heidar got them both.   The first was a majestic, thumping header from a right-wing cross.  Offside - just - but what a goal.  How football should be.  He scrambled another soon after, ruled offside again (incorrectly), and I think we knew it wasn’t to be our day then.

That may have summed up his season.   He scored one of his famous penalties against Middlesbrough (anyone remember Jesper Olsen?), turned around the away game at Watford and belted that corker against Newcastle, but there were some dodgy misses too.   And then those cards… we had some funny games against Spurs last year, generally playing better than the results would suggest, but Heidar got himself sent off in one of the games (1-1 I think) at a time where we really were in control.  That was disappointing, but again summed up his season.

I’ll miss him a lot.  He was supposedly quite a character (in a good way) and a good club man.  He certainly wouldn’t have disgraced our squad this year, but with all the new signings he wasn’t really needed and the money was presumably too good to turn down (it effectively financed Lee Cook, a player who adds more to this group of players than Heidar, you’d guess).   Now he’ll go to Bolton where his up and at ‘em style is perfect for that team’s approach.   Good luck, Heidar, and thanks for the memories.

Lee Cook!   Some of us were a bit previous announcing this, but Sanchez has been on Cook’s trail all summer: this was clearly a player he coveted.    The signing fills the gaping hole we’ve had on the left since Coleman robbed West Ham of £5 million for Boa.    Cook doesn’t come cheap - he’s £2.5 million at first, but possibly rising to almost double that - but he’ll be a better player than latter-day Boa by some stretch.

This almost completes Sanchez’s rebuilding project.   We now have lots of players and lots of options.   So we can play fast defenders against Arsenal, tall ones against Birmingham, and so on and so forth.    I’d guess that we’re now looking at something like:

Niemi; Rosenior-Baird-Hughes-Konchesky; Davies/Dempsey-Davis-Diop-Cook; Kamara-McBride/Healy

Which looks like a tidy side to me.  With a bit of luck (and let’s not underestimate how much of football really is luck) this team can come 9th.

We take the news where we can get it:  Setanta Sports (and others besides) say we’re now interested in tiny forward Roy O’Donovan of Cork City.   Reading pulled this trick off with Kevin Doyle so as low-risk/high-reward moves go this looks like a decent gamble.    If it turns out that he has that something that you think you’ve seen, job done, you’ve found a good player.  If he’s not good enough in the end, well, at that price it was worth a look.    You never know.    We are vying with Southend for his signature!   (sorry, Mart, that exclamation mark was slightly gratuitous).   But this is the sort of speculative moves that clever teams without lots of money make, I feel.  Well done, Lawrie.

Meanwhile, back on British soil, Chopper has put together a match report from last night (as best I know he wasn’t there either).   Chopper’s writing every day now, it seems, which is great news for Fulham fans.

It sounds like the lads did quite well in what was, after all, their first pre-season run-out.   I’m not going to get into second hand performance reports - as a community of supporters we can never agree on the abilities of players we’ve all watched so taking the odd view here and there from a small game like this as gospel seems silly - but it sounds like everyone started impressively enough, all considered.

Conspicuously absent from the whole gig were Philippe Christanval (he’s so going to Real Sociedad) and Heidar Helguson, who may be on his way after all.

That’s all.  Tip of the day:  honey/oats/left over creme fraiche.   Stir it all together into a lovely mush and savour.

http://www.daggers.co.uk/

Fulham: 1. Antti Niemi, 2. Chris Baird, 3. Paul Konchesky, 4. Aaron Hughes, 5. Zat Knight, 6. Steven Davis, 7. Simon Davies, 8. Michael Brown, 9. Diomansky Kamara, 10. Brian McBride, 11. Franck Queudrue. Subs: 12. Tony Warner, 14. Papa Bouba Diop, 15. Collins John, 16. Michael Timlin, 17. Alexei Smertin, 18. Carlos Bocanegra, 19. Ian Pearce, 20. David Healy, 21. Clint Dempsey, 22. Liam Rosenior, 23. Moritz Voltz.

Which I don’t think tells us anything… couldn’t make it tonight, I finish work too late and at the wrong end of London, but will be keeping an eye on things from afar. It’s really a first runout for players, a slight step up from what they’ve been doing at Motspur Park. Nice for folks to get a first look at the newcomers.

UPDATE: Finished 1-0 with a Kamara goal.

What was I saying yesterday?  Here’s a longish piece on Fulham on the Guardian sport site.  

Lawrie Sanchez’s hot hand in the transfer market has attracted less attention than might be imagined. The rapidly deteriorating Guardian Sport website has barely mentioned these signings, and as Chopper noted today, the Times hasn’t got things right either. Quite the contrary.

It’s interesting, doing what Chopper and I (and bq) do. We write about Fulham from a slightly obsessed perspective; the very act of finding something to write about every day means that Fulham can’t be far from our thoughts. And the more I’ve done this the less appealing the major media seems. I still buy a newspaper but not particularly for the sports section any more. Thanks to Steve B and Barra, most of the transfer rumours are on TFI before the papers get them, and despite all the noise* it’s a great place to learn more about Fulham. This could turn into a long and eventually very egotistical womble about the place of amateur writing in the modern world, so let’s leave it here. But I sense things are changing.

ANYWAY. Lawrie’s been making the headlines (sometimes) for his transfers, but, absent any news today, he called a press conference to talk about what he’s done. It was really very impressive. Thanks to TFI (again) you can see it here.

The man speaks a lot of sense. Gives a good interview. If he improves the team as much as he’s improved the manager interviews we’re looking at Europe. I can see a world where David Healy goes all Clive Allen, where Diomansy Kamara is suprisingly the second coming of Thierry Henry and where Steve Davis, Jimmy Bullard and Clint Dempsey are simply unstoppable. Fulham are the surprise of the season and storm into the reckoning for serious placing, only to falter late on when teams get wise to us and put 9 men behind the ball at all times.

What? Oh. Right, maybe. It’s good to be excited though isn’t it? I can’t get to the friendlies but I have my season ticket now and nobody can stop me from enjoying the season ahead. Those results had better be as good as we hope though, eh?

* More than once I’ve felt tempted to post Jim Morrison’s memorable refrain in the middle of Five to One: 4:49 or so left in the video! Not remotely safe for work (bad language). I feel like a bit of an elitest ars3h01l3 now - perhaps that’s exactly what I am! - but sometimes the lack of thinking and critical evaluation can be quite galling. We can all be wrong about things, but to feel so certain of something while simultaneously failing to consider alternative perspectives seems ridiculous to me. I’ve written “we’ll see” and “who knows?” more than any other phrase since I started writing this site, and I think that’s instructive. Anyway. Doors fans, enjoy this rather average live performance!