Smertin no scapegoat, says Setanta, referencing The Times:
“Smertin has done nothing wrong,” the Fulham boss was quoted as saying in The Times.
“I just thought that we needed to try something different in midfield.”
Fair enough. A lot of people are upset about this (a lot of people are upset about everything Fulham these days) but I’m not too concered. Murphy’s a good player and I think a couple more games should see the cobwebs fully blown away. He’ll be an asset. Sanchez saw what we here did, that the midfield was getting overrun and beaten up, and changed things a little. Hasn’t worked too badly so far, even if Murphy hasn’t hit top form yet. I hope Sanchez sticks with this for a while yet.
Torres fit but probably won’t start on Saturday. Good. He’s ferrrightening.
“The other team will be looking for our weaknesses and I’m sure Fulham will think they can do something in a certain way and get something out of the game. We’ve all got to do a bit more and make sure we get something out of this game.
“No disrespect to Fulham, but if you have ideas of winning the league and you’re playing them at home you have got to beat them.
Indeed. We’ll see.
“To be fair, Shefki was down the pecking order. As a loan player coming in from a Championship club he was always going to be ‘just in case’.
“But he came in last week and did an excellent job for half an hour. The test now will be if I start him, can he do it for 90 minutes?
“After we lost Brian, Shefki was brought in on the premise that if we needed a big frontman he was it and the minute he won his first header it livened everyone up and made the Reading centre-halves think ‘We’re in a game now’.
“But Liverpool will be a different game and we’ll need different things up there than we needed for Reading.
“We can’t be as gung-ho away (from home) and we perhaps need the players that will frighten Liverpool.”
Kuqi’s a handful but nothing Liverpool won’t have seen before. Still, who knows?
“New” Fulham blog here. 16 year old Andrew from New Jersey has taken over the Fulham beat. Just as well, it seems. Scrolling down the page we see that Andrew’s predecessor was something of a tool. He jacked all this in a huff after the Sunderland game, which demonstrates a lack of something or other. Maybe that’s mean, maybe he didn’t like Fulham in the first place, but still, his parting shot was a bit crappy. Here’s hoping Andrew gets the bug and sticks with the super whites. His dad was a fan and he’s used to following losing teams, so I’d say the odds are in his favour. Good luck, mate.
