Craven Cottage Newsround

Not really. 

But what to think? 

Chopper’s pointed out that Lawrie recently got called into Harrods to explain the bad results.

Rob’s still not happy.

What does it mean?

When I watch Fulham, am I seeing the team as it is, or as I want it to be? 

Am I ignoring the bad things because I can’t face the idea that things aren’t as good as I’d hoped, or are others being caught up in this massive fog of negativity? 

There is little by way of news to distract us today.

Shefki Kuqi has been cited as being ‘patient’ in the press, largely based on him saying that he’s happy to get his chance and hopes he’ll get more time on the pitch soon.  I expect he will.  Clint did his best but I feel a new dawn of route one attacking may soon be upon us, like it or not.   When the going gets tough, the short passing gets going.  Bombs away, etc.

Also, we have no obvious left-back this week, what with Konch and Boca being suspended.  So your guess is as good as mine.   I might try to probe someone to learn more about what might happen.   The thinking seems to be that we’ll either see Junior on the left with Baird back at right, Stefanovic moving wide and Baird coming into the middle, or something weird involving Nathan Ashton or Adrian Leijer.  It’s hardly what you need when points are so scarce, but such is life.    Perhaps Phillippe Christanval can play on crutches.

As ever, we will be out selling Fulham Reviews.    See you there, perhaps.

Changing direction slightly, this is very interesting.

“Management is an incestuous business,” he said. “It’s the only one I know where people are hired, allowed to spend £20m, fail miserably, toddle off to play golf for six months, walk straight into another job, and fail again.”

[then lots about a conflict of interest as Megson's 'friend' was tasked with recruiting for the position]

Megson, lest it be forgotten, took charge at Nottingham Forest after leaving the Hawthorns and subsequently took the two-time European Cup winners into the third tier of English football for the first time in over half a century. He then had an 18-month spell out of work, when the list of managerless clubs to speak to him and go elsewhere included Swansea, Sheffield Wednesday and Huddersfield. He ended up coaching, unpaid, at Stoke City before, finally, he was appointed at Leicester City where, six weeks in, the fans responded to headlines about Bolton’s interest by: a) scarcely believing it could be true; and b) lustily serenading him with chants of “Megson for Bolton”.

All of which speaks for itself.  The clubs that are prepared to look in less obvious places can be rewarded.   “Arsene Who?”, etc.   Those who recycle the same old ne’er do wells get predictable results.   Who is surprised that Bryan Robson has not done well at Sheffield Utd?  What do Norwich really expect from Glenn Roeder?

This reminds me of an interesting article in the FT, by Simon Kuper. 

Many clubs deliberately hire bad office staff. Years ago I requested an interview with the chairman of an English club quoted on the stock market. The press officer asked me to send a fax (a 1980s technology revered by football clubs). I sent it. She said she never got it. On request I sent three more faxes to different officials. She said none arrived. It was a familiar experience in the football industry. A month later I was granted permission to e-mail the request. When I arrived for the interview, I met the press officer. She was beautiful. I had known she would be. Many clubs recruit the women on their office staff for their looks, the men because they played professional football or are somebody’s mate.

….

If the clubs wanted, they could recruit the excellent executives who yearn to work in football. A professor at a leading business school told me many of his students offer to work free for sports companies as summer interns. The companies seldom want them. If you work for a football club, your goal is to keep working there, not to be shown up by some overeducated young thing who actually knows about business.

And so on.   I’m sure he’s exaggerating a bit, but not all that much.  I did some work with the FA a while back (2001 or so) and saw the things Kuper mentions for myself at the two clubs I spent time at.  Anyway, times have no doubt changed…

Where were we?  That was a needless digression.  Back to the Megson issue.

Fulham took a slightly risky approach by hiring more or less unproven Lawrie Sanchez, but in general it was a welcome move.  Sanchez is a bright man who seems to understand what he’s faced with, he just can’t stop his players conceding late goals at the moment.  Time will tell if it pays off, but at least we didn’t hire a proven failure.   I’d rather an unproven manager, selected for good reasons (here that Sanchez had galvanised NI), than an appointment that is really hard to defend on any results-based level (Megson).  

We’ll just have to see how it works out…

Finger pointing updated, harsh as ever.  Chris Baird gets a breather…

If you think that I should be crying into my pillow and sticking voodoo pins into a mini Sanchez doll, well think again.

I refuse to get into this “beat Reading or change the manager” talk, and I refuse to alter my tone of general optimism (unless we lose to Reading).  

So writing silly poems about matches might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I felt an urge to do something odd and that was it.  And it’s my website.  Normal service resumes shortly.   Possibly.

Incidentally, is Reading going to be a bad game to watch or what?  It looks like we’ll see the two teams least likely to find a teammate with their passes pitted against one another.   Could get messy.    Let’s attack first and ask questions later.  We’re in this annoying sequence of getting single points all the time again. You’re better of alternating 4-1 wins with 4-1 defeats as far as points is concerned.   Let’s go for the jugular.  Be bold.   What would Steve Waugh’s Australian cricket team do in our shoes?   They’d come out all guns blazing, that’s what*.   ATTACK!  ATTACK!   ATTACK!  

*I accept that they’re the best in the world at what they do, and we’re not quite that good, but the point stands

Junior’s long clearance, bends down the side
Defensive mixup, open net, Healy shoots wide!

Free-kick, miles out, Simon Davies is set
Surprise: he lets fly, the ball swings into the net!

Kamara’s through again, he can wrap this up now
Beats his man, beats the keeper, but the ref saw a foul!

The long-awaited away win, just five minutes to go
A cross, Kenwyne Jones, it’s in, oh no!

Time running out, Junior volleys thin air
Stokes clean through to win it, but Niemi is there!

Two more points dropped?

The first game in an eternity that I haven’t watched. It felt really strange. We were in the Famous Three Kings in West Kensington for a while, but they couldn’t get the game feed there. We had a choice of three other matches but it wasn’t quite the same so we gave up and had a wander. From there it was a case of looking through pub windows on the way to places and seeing if the score had changed.

We were walking down the North End Road when I saw that Simon Davies had scored (32nd minute). I noticed this while peering through a halloween dressed pub window. Paul Merson was describing it. We were outside so I could hear nothing, but this may be the more informative way to watch Merson.

Happy, then, we wandered on. At Fulham Broadway we decided that we’d have to go home via Wimbledon owing to engineering works on the eastbound district line. Why is the district line so much harder to maintain than the others? In Wimbledon Hade spent some time in WH Smith, so I sat next door in Waterstones, watching the the bbc website on my mobile phone. The minutes ticked by and Greg Halford was sent off. Good, I thought.

I looked at the Moleskine notebooks stand and thought about how nice they were, but how pricey too. Then I checked my phone again and Kenwyn Jones had equalised. I really did feel sick.

Question: is this the unluckiest team in the premiership, or is something afoot?
Answer: damned if I know

Sky Sports report

Lawrie talks to the beeb

Minute by minute from the official site

Bad news: Konch suspended; Bouazza buggered shoulder

Good news: everyone else is okay! The usuals anyway.

We should see:

-Niemi

-Baird-Hughes-Stefanovic-Bocanegra

-Davies-Davis-MurphySmertin-Seol

-Dempsey-KamaraHealy

Which is alright as far as it goes, I suppose.

First game of the year I won’t be watching. Ah well, maybe that’ll help them.

Friday night, music club:

Feed your head!

Quick and dirty job based on these stats.

We are, it seems, good at shooting but not passing.  I’ll be damned…

Meanwhile, at the Sheraton, Chopper has a terrific post up.  Hop on over and have a look.  It really emphasises that the team has been scratching around for quite a while, and that relegation wouldn’t be that surprising all things considered.

Still, I shall maintain my positivity for now.

Suddenly very busy, so rehashing some of my own posts from TFI today.  Lazy, I know, but it states my position and no sense reinventing the wheel.

Who do you think has a better understanding of what Collins John can contribute? A man who watches him every day in training, or a man who remembers him scoring a few goals two years ago?

If Collins was playing like the player we thought he might be in training do you think he’d be at Leicester on loan now?

You might not like the players Sanchez brought in, but he had reason to believe that they were good footballers who can do a job for Fulham. Things have been far from perfect, but they’re not nearly as bad as a lot of people are trying to make out.

My take on the signings so far:

Keller - decent backup, no worries there
Baird - decent player, has had problems adjusting to the top flight. Might make it, might not
Konchesky - one of the signings of the season (for any team)
Hughes - no problem with Hughes, by and large he looks like a solid, efficient defender. Not the dominant force we wanted, but let’s be realistic about what we could’ve got. Although maybe the Kamara money might have been better used here
Seol - really not sure about him, but we have seen suggestions of magic there. Sadly it seems that we’ll only see them every couple of months
Davis - a really good player, but it seems he needs an enforcer with him. He offers us a lot and given time should be pretty influential. Have faith!
Bouazza - terrific potential. Seems to have it all, I’m quite hopeful here
Healy - will score goals, and looked terrific linking with McBride. Since then has been caught in a job-share with Kamara and neither have thrived
Kamara - not convinced really. Seol didn’t cost anything so I’m not so disappointed with his signing, but for what we paid Kamara ought to be doing more than he is. Perhaps the best is yet to come though
Cook - well everyone says he can play. Looking forward to seeing it for myself
We have 8 points from 30 because this Fulham team, which I would guess is about a mid-table team:

lost away at Arsenal (an exceptional side) when well placed to win
beat Bolton
lost at home to Middlesbrough in extraordinary circumstances
lost away at Villa, having led, had a penalty refused, and hit the inside of the post
drew at home to Spurs
drew away at Wigan despite being in no trouble for most of the game
drew at home to a very good Man City side
drew away at Chelsea
lost to a pretty good Portsmouth side
drew at home to Derby

I’d say that only the Derby game is really bad. We should’ve beaten Boro, and would have if Warner hadn’t thrown one in, McBride got injured scoring, etc, etc. None of the other results are anything out of the ordinary.

I think the players are alright. They’re Fulham players, so I’m judging them accordingly. If I was an Arsenal fan I’d be holding them to different standards.

I’d give Sanchez as long as he needs, or until such a point as he proves that things are going badly wrong beyond the usual ups and downs that you’d reasonably expect in any season.
 

Here is the league table:

1 Arsenal 25
2 Manchester United 23
3 Manchester City 22
4 Liverpool 19
5 Portsmouth 18
6 Blackburn Rovers 18
7 Chelsea 18
8 Newcastle United 17
9 Aston Villa 14
10 West Ham United 13
11 Everton 13
12 Reading 10
13 Fulham 8
14 Birmingham City 8
15 Wigan Athletic 8
16 Sunderland 8
17 Middlesbrough 8
18 Tottenham Hotspur 7
19 Derby County 6
20 Bolton Wanderers 5

Alright, you say, so what? We’ve seen that.

Yes.

But a wise old owl once told me that if I want to know how good a team really is, look at its goal difference. The theory is that while points on the board may be misleading, goal difference is usually a fair indicator of what’s what. Here:

1 Arsenal 15 25
2 Manchester United 12 23
3 Manchester City 8 22
4 Liverpool 11 19
5 Portsmouth 7 18
6 Blackburn Rovers 5 18
7 Chelsea 2 18
8 Newcastle United 5 17
9 Aston Villa 1 14
10 West Ham United 3 13
11 Everton 0 13
12 Reading -10 10
13 Fulham -4 8
14 Birmingham City -5 8
15 Wigan Athletic -6 8
16 Sunderland -8 8
17 Middlesbrough -8 8
18 Tottenham Hotspur -4 7
19 Derby County -17 6
20 Bolton Wanderers -7 5

The number before the points is GD. It’s early days yet, but I see patterns:

Derby really are for it (yes, yes, 0-0 at home is about 4 under par)

Reading want to watch out

Liverpool are better than Man City

But Man City aren’t bad

Neither are Portsmouth

Spurs aren’t as bad as their position shows

And neither are we.

Usually you’d want more than ten games before getting into this sort of thing, but the point stands.  Goal difference is predictive.

CCN. Where blind optimism rules.

I’ve said before that I’m quite positive about Sanchez and the team.  I think he’ll turn things around. People are being too negative, too knee-jerk.  This stoopid-media age (”is this a must-win game, Andy?” “Yes!  There may be twenty-eight games left, but if Chelsea don’t win today their season is over, Richard” etc) makes us too jumpy, too quick to judge.   Time will tell.  Even if we do lose in Sunderland (we probably will, and it means little).

Here is an interesting stat, from The Times newsletter (via Martin):

3 - wins achieved by Fulham in their last 30 league games

If Sanchez is not yet a saviour, we must not forget that he inherited a right mess.

The game may have been dire, but the Fulham Review continues to go down well.   It’s amazing how much more interesting life can get when you give it a chance.  Last week I handed a copy to Jimmy Hill on his way into the ground, and he only went and took it onto the pitch with him.  He was later seen on Match of the Day, which started a weird series of events that culminated in us turning up a great photo of the man and the book, taken by Jon Hall.    Then on Saturday Matthew noticed that Jimmy was in the match programme holding the book again.  

This week we were standing outside, trying to shift some copies, when who walks by but former West Ham, Everton and England striker Tony Cottee.   A few people talked to him as he arrived, but not to the strange looking man at his side.   This fellow, in his seventies at least, wore a pair of curiously out of place grey tracksuit bottoms and walked with the beginnings of a limp.   I watched to see where he went, and when Cottee was pulled over by the press entrance the identity of his companion became clear in my mind.   I made my move.

“Brian Glanville?” I said.
“Yes,” he said, smiling.  I handed him a Fulham Review and started to tell him that I was a huge fan, having read many of his books.
“Thank you,” he said.   He then launched into a monologue about how he’d give it to his grandson, a gifted sportsman who liked Fulham but who was now being tempted by the dark side: rugby.   Glanville explained that the boy was a good footballer, but because he was quite tall the rugby teachers were after him.   This went on for a short time.   Glanville is, I believe, quite (in)famous for his monologues.

I left him to get on with his duties, thrilled.   Glanville, you see, has long been a hero of mine.  He has seen every World Cup since 1950 in person, and has written some terrific books on the game.   I was going to tell him that I’d enjoyed “Soccer Nemesis”, a book he’d written in the 50s about how the British game was under siege from better and more open minded foreign sides.     Or his famous World Cup book, updated every four years and still the best reference book on the subject I know of.   Or his wonderfully interesting autobiography, in which he tells of his early career in Italy, his cycling along the Hog’s Back to watch Aldershot (my girlfriend was brought up in a village just off the Hog’s Back), or his later fun and games on Fleet Street.     Or his monthly columns in World Soccer, which are must-reads even now.   

But I didn’t get to mention any of this, to really stress how much it meant to me that I was meeting him.    But what difference would that have made?  I’m sure he was happy enough to be recognised at all.    I’ll have to hope so.

The heroes on the pitch are all well and good, but really I hold no great desire to meet any of them.  However, I’d give my right arm to spend an hour with Brian Glanville or David Lacey or Paul Wilson or even Joe Lovejoy.    These people have done so much of what I’d love to do.  

In any case, consider me happy to have met a hero, and let’s chalk up another positive thing to come of Martin and I writing the Fulham Review (and of Matthew and Adam publishing it, of course, but that’s one of those positive things!)   Who knows what’s next?

How often do we ever feel certain about things?   It’s quite rare isn’t it?    One thing I felt certain of this year is that Lawrie Sanchez would improve Fulham.  I liked the thinking behind his signings and I thought they’d do well for us.   But maybe it isn’t happening.

Sometimes I really have to take a step back.   Enough people are saying things that worry me that now I’m getting worried too.  Left to my own devices I’d still be looking on the bright side, still waiting for the luck to even itself out, still waiting for the team to find its collective identity.   But it really doesn’t seem to be happening.    Rob at Following the Fuham is a pretty even handed bloke, usually, but he’s really not happy.   I was playing football tonight with a couple of Fulham supporters and one of them was telling me how unhappy he is.    I daren’t even look at the message boards today for fear of getting even more depressed.   Things do appear to be going wrong.

Nothing that a couple of results won’t fix, but where are these results going to come from?   The defence still looks wobbly, the midfield still looks lightweight, and the attack is either completely starved of service or firing blanks, whichever way you want to look at it.   At least Niemi seems to have got his groove back.

This is when Lawrie Sanchez earns his corn.  Earlier in the year he was talking about raising the bar, raising expectations, getting the team to think like a top half team.   Come on then, let’s see it.   He needs to get them out of this funk, and fast.

Derby - lest we forget - have not scored on their travels this season.  They are a poor side playing poorly.   Today Fulham were not noticeably better.

The game’s major turning point came as half-time approached.   Paul Konchesky, harrassed from behind, lashed out with an elbow.   The Derby player collapsed and Konchesky saw a red card.   Now we would have to take the game to Derby a man light.

This was probably decisive.   Bywater in the Derby goal was occasionally tested but never by anything difficult.  We tried, but with ten men a goal never looked likely.  And in the end Derby may feel that this game was there to be taken.  Kenny Miller, the lively Scotland forward, had two or three terrific chances to snatch the points, and Antti Niemi, recalled again, had to be back to his best to keep the clean sheet.  A draw felt numbing; how would we have felt after a defeat?

How can we even be contemplating a near-miss at home to Derby?   Why was this not a straightforward win?   Yes, the dismissal was important and hindered us enormously, but sympathy is running short now, people are bored of excuses, no matter how reasonable those excuses might be.  With this team there’s always *something*.   We need a win.

Plus points:  Niemi, for his excellent return; Baird, for having his best game in a Fulham shirt; Dempsey, for his McBride like effort and tenacity in the face of ridiculous officiating, which penalised him repeatedly for being thrown around by Derby defenders.  That’s it.

I’m doing my homework on Derby:

They’re not bad up front. Kenny Miller, an important part of Scotland’s recent run, is playing for them. Here he talks about his disappointment at the recent international defeat.

They also have annoying forward Robert Earnshaw. He may be recalled after playing well in a recent sub appearance and scoring for Wales in midweek. Earnshaw’s a weird one, the embodiment of the journeyman forward perhaps. Does he have more talent than we realise, or less? He’s a threat though, the sort of player who can and does score goals you don’t want him to score. Hmmm.

They may be vulnerable at the other end though. Dean Leacock, found here explaining that he had to leave Fulham to get regular football, partners Darren Moore. It’s conspicuous in its Championship look.

The Derby Evening Telegraph is pretty good at all this. Here’s another link, this time regarding Brian Clough’s portrayal in David Peace’s recent book. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s one of those books that everyone says is great and I know I’ll get there in the end. But the book’s not going anywhere and I’ve plenty of good stuff to be going on with.

Finally, thanks to the BBC this time, here is the Derby squad:

Bywater, Griffin, Moore, Malcolm, Teale, Davis, Camara, McEveley, Todd, Oakley, Mears, Pearson, Barnes, Fagan, Howard, Price, Earnshaw, Miller, Jones, Leacock, Lewis.

No, it isn’t particularly worrying. Giles Barnes is very good but hasn’t played much this year. Perhaps he’ll waltz back in and ruin our weekend. Tricky little bugger, fast, shoots. He appears to have a lot going for him, and knows it. One to watch tomorrow, if he plays.

Where is Benny Feilhaber?

Anyway, I think we’ll win easily enough. And if we don’t? Well, let’s see what the performance is like.

Rob has his usual sterling preview interviews. Includes Shakira.

He he. Sorry. Weak, obvious, puerile. Oh well. I’ll go high brow next week. John Coltrane for Sunderland or something. Anyway, you can’t beat a bit of Shakira.

Football. Derby are interesting to me. Hade went to Uni in Derby so we watched a few games when Pride Park first opened. I know Fulham and Derby have previous, but I enjoyed watching the Stimac/Wanchope Rams back in the late 90s. We saw them a few times, decent side at the time. It’ll be interesting to see how things play out tomorrow.

We’ll get back to proper writing next week.  Both Brian and I are having pretty heavy times at work at the moment, so we’re doing what we can.  Also, we’ll be selling Fulham Reviews tomorrow from about 12. See you there!

We are better than Derby
We will beat Derby
Fear not.