Hmmm (not Fulham really)

Is there a limit to this? Could they paint us a picture of Lionel Messi that we could sell for £50 million? That wouldn’t work would it? They’d need to sell us the painting for £50 million. We’d then have a useless painting and a hole in the bank.

This is quite funny too. Garfield without Garfield.

Clearout

The Mail has this about some summer exits.

Roy Hodgson will hold talks with Chris Baird, Philippe Christanval and Alexei Smertin over their futures.

It is likely that all three players will be told they can move, even if Fulham are relegated.

Hardly news but there we are.

The same paper with a Birmingham view on the game:

“Fulham will have their tails up. They had a great win at Manchester City after being 2-0 down. To come back and win 3-2 shows great character.

“I know our away form hasn’t been great but we have to go there and make sure we win the game.

“Everyone has to be focused and show the determination to get the win. We need three points and knock Fulham of the running. Nothing else will do.”

A Lille player targetted. Maybe by us. Maybe not.

Coast is clear

The next two games are effectively a mini-tournament. We have been drawn against Birmingham and then Portsmouth. If we win those two matches we win the mini-tournament, if we don’t we’re knocked out. Ordinarily these two wins would seem impossible for Fulham 07/08, but this is not an ordinary situation. Anything really can happen now. The old footballing cliche about taking a game at a time could not be more relevant: beat Birmingham and it’s a one-off battle on the South coast.

We can only hope that the Craven Cottage crowd is in good humour on Saturday. As a group we seem to have become spoilt, quick to voice displeasure at anything that is not perfect, or anyone who doesn’t appear to have the sufficient fire in his belly on that day. After the Liverpool defeat a number of fans in the Johnny Haynes Stand shouted at the departing Roy Hodgson as if the manager had just insulted their nearest and dearest. Such venom, such hate. This sort of thing transmits itself to the pitch. Had we been 2-0 down at home to Man City the crowd would have jeered the players off, would have muttered, stopped shouting, and flatlined towards 90 minutes. There would presumably have been no comeback.

So we must hope for an early goal to settle everyone’s nerves. The other helpful thing is that the crowd ought to be running out of scapegoats. A feature of the early part of the season was watching Chris Baird’s game fall apart as the crowd seized on his every lapse. He would start solidly enough, misplace a pass (as everyone does), and unravel from there. Which is not to defend Baird, but to suggest that he wasn’t helped very much either.

Danny Murphy remains on a short leash among fans in Johnny Haynes, but should have done enough by now to get some leeway. If he missed a penalty at City, at least he had the composure to put the ball back where it should have gone in the first place. And his slide rule pass to set up Kamara’s winner was an exquisite illustration of the damage that vision, technique and timing can do to tired defences. It was a beatiful pass and one that Kamara did justice to with a thrashing, joyous finish.

Kamara… another who has been berated this season. But there have been some goals, some very good goals, and he has also been quite unfortunate on occasion. At least two disallowed, a shot at Villa that hit the very inside of a post, and some interesting, scuttling runs that have led to important free-kicks (I’m thinking of Blackburn at home in particular here). Not everyone’s cup of tea, but another player who may be benefitting from our new manager’s insistance on passing the football and from a more clearcut role in the team (is he a winger, is he a forward?). We have small players, it makes sense to keep the ball on the deck. Several of the squad are benefitting from this.

Things seem to be coming together. At this point Hodgson seems to know his best team, and would be wise to stick with it. Changes could very reasonably be made, but the Kamara and Nevland partnership would seem most effective in breaking down a tiring defence late on, rather than doing the spade work when the defence is packed, committed and unbroken. McBride and Healy are capable of making things happen too and deserve the chance to play.

Otherwise me must hope for more good fortune and no more injuries. It’s doable now. The good thing about running out of games is that the task seems less daunting. Over five matches anything can go wrong, the series is too big to think about. Two is different: win one, win the next one, job done.

Drama!

Another vid from the whizz-kids at Motspur Park.

Nice one for Danny Murphy fans: that through ball for Diomansy’s winner was delicious and beautifully captured on this film.

Morning

Really good fan’s eye video of the Murphy goal, if you’re on facebook.

Nice Bullard interview in Saturday’s Times.

“When I was doing rehab, the people at Fulham told me not to rush it. They put me before the club. That had a big effect on me and I have no wish to leave.”

Smile

This isn’t something we’ve seen all that much.

Huzzah!

Inflatable magic

I don’t want to steal anyone’s thunder, but consider the facts:

away games where Toby has not had an inflatable toy with him and we haven’t won: millions

away games where Toby has had an inflatable toy with him and we have won: two

You can’t argue with that. It’s a fact.

From left to right: new acquaintance Sue (with Fulham USA tshirt), a slightly demonic Toby, Anna.

!!!!!!!!!!!!! Man City 2-3 Fulham !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ha!

A second consecutive away win (!) and we’re still fighting.  And it was absolutely deserved.

Fulham started well, passing well and pressing City back.  An early chance fell to Dempsey, whose low strike was expertly saved by the impressive Joe Hart.  Disaster was moments away though:  the usually excellent Stalteri lost the ball and Simon Ireland, via a big deflection, sent the ball looping over Kasey Keller.  A huge setback.

And if that was bad, things got worse when Benjani found space between four defenders and side-footed home Vassell’s cross to make it 2-0.  Fulham were playing well but conceding easily.  At this point relegation was all but confirmed, particularly with Bolton winning at Spurs and Birmingham up on Liverpool.

The half-time stats were painful: 10 Fulham shots; 2 City shots.  City 2-0 up.  Excruciating stuff.

We seemed to be going through the motions in the second half, but Lady Luck finally decided to pay us some attention.  The eccentric Diomansy Kamara found himself well placed in the City box, but dithered and found the road ahead closed.  Unperturbed, he found a way to shoot anyway, and, extraordinarily, the ball squirted through Joe Hart’s legs and nestled in the net.  Game on!

A soft penalty really woke us up.  A deep ball into the area and Nevland was hauled down.  He may have been fortunate in that this tangle looked worse than it might have been, but a penalty was awarded, and parity was attainable.  Danny Murphy, as good a penalty taker as you’ll find, fluffed his effort, Hart saving well, but Murphy got another go and tapped home the rebound.  Fulham Nation mopped its brow and prepared for the impossible.

City had been living on the edge for some time.  Their makeshift defence was pushing up and a through ball really did seem on.  We nearly had it once or twice, but interceptions thwarted our desperate attacks.  Then Danny Murphy slotted through again, and that man Kamara strode on and buried his chance over Hart’s right shoulder like Geoff Hurst sealing the World Cup in ‘66.

Pandemonium.  The impossible was really happening, and after months and months of road trip futility Fulham had pulled of a second consecutive away win.

Heroes?  Roy Hodgson has masterminded (ha, what a phrase!) two away wins now and deserves praise for getting the team playing football again.   He seemed to have found a winning partnership at Reading, with McBride and Healy linking very well, but today they weren’t playing well.  So Kamara and Nevland were introduced and turned the game on its head.  Teams don’t often go to Manchester City and win, especially teams like us who don’t win away, and especially after going 2-0 down.  This was crazy, desperate football, but it kept this stupid season alive and almost brings us within touching distance of our rivals.  How about that?

Man City 2-3 Fulham

I don’t even know what to say. Seriously, I’m speechless and the words are not coming to me. Does this give us hope? Or is this totally Fulhamish, just prolonging the inevitable? Either way, a huge win today.

OK, all you Diomansy Kamara and Danny Murphy critics, let’s hear you today. Kamara with a brace, one in injury time for the win and Murphy with a goal and an assist in the winning goal.

Truly, unbelievable!

Here we go then

What a day.   Today it could be all over, or we could claw back some lost ground, or something in between.

Yikes.

On a lighter note, did you see that Jari Litmanen’s out again?   This time he has hurt his ear.   Anyway.

Happiness

This is interesting. Freakonomics writers discussing how money can make you happier.

Did you catch White Lines on footballers’ salaries? Have a read.

I was going to do a long bit about a BBC3 documentary I saw last night about sweat shops (workers in some do 18 hour days for the equivalent of a pound a day), but probably best to pass on that.

Great stuff from Colin at Championship at Best. He shows how Fulham have paid more per appearance for their purchases than Arsenal have for thiers. Ye gods.

Coleman in the mirror

Here.

Coleman did seem to have an eye for a player. Many of our better players are Coleman buys, even now.

Hahnemann and the death of pretty football

Interesting little column from Marcus Hahnemann here.

This has not exactly been the ideal week for me. Somehow, Reading managed to jump start Fulham’s fight to stay up last weekend with a 2-0 defeat at the Madejski while stalling our own recovery (I’ve been working on these car metaphors while fixing my truck).

He he. But not really. If our recovery was jump-started, well, it’s still in the middle of the Australian outback with half a tank of petrol and no water.

The Guardian’s Richard Williams on football in this country. It contains that valuable Jorge Valdano quote too:

It is a year since Jorge Valdano, the Argentinian World Cup winner turned football philosopher, watched a European Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Chelsea and made his famous remark about Anfield and, by implication, the current state of English football. “Put a shit hanging from a stick in the middle of this passionate, crazy stadium and there are people who will tell you it’s a work of art,” he said. “It’s not. It’s a shit hanging from a stick.” There is no reason to think that, 12 months later, he would have had a different reaction to a match between the same clubs in which all the salient characteristics of the Premier League were writ large.

He he. Williams again:

With its bottomless funding and its emphasis on producing players who can run non-stop for 90 minutes, the Premier League is promoting the football of Croesus and Creatine. Often exhilarating, it engages television audiences all around the world because it can guarantee that, if you need to break off to get a drink from the bar or the fridge, the thrills and spills will still be going on when you get back.

No one should underestimate the amount of effort that it takes to assemble and prepare a team capable of mastering this demanding footballing idiom.

…

But those who prefer a different diet should not be dismissed out of hand. Although a Ferenc Puskas or a Wim van Hanegem will never again be allowed to put his foot on the ball and slow a game down to his own preferred pace, that does not mean there is only one pace at which the modern game can be played.

Indeed. The first comment on the Guardian blog (as is so often the case) is sniping, “bitter and living in the past” it says. Well maybe. Richard Williams is big on football’s history, and (like me) has watched and been very excited by film of the great Hungarian side of the 50s. Yes the game has moved on from that, a long way on, and yes that’s probably a good thing on balance, but his point that the football we see is getting increasingly dull is hard to disagree with.

It’s not a new thought by any stretch – those of us who have watched Fulham’s increasingly desperate attempts to keep up with all this need no reminder of what modern football in England can descend to – but it’s still very valid. Does it have to be this way? Is Arsene Wenger the only person capable of insisting on sparkling, interesting, aethetically pleasing football? Of course not.

Funnily enough dear old Lawrie Sanchez touched on this in one of his many misunderstood interviews. He said that if we wanted teams to play like Arsenal we’d have to do away with relegation. Predictably people latched onto this as evidence that “That prick wants to get rid of relegation!” when all he was saying was that the barriers to playing football are quite high, that, in his mind, to do so would mean greater risk.

And I think he’s right. What Sanchez tried to do and what Sam Allardyce did, was eliminate as many risks as possible. Allardyce was famous for looking for and then exploiting all available edges, which generally came down to strangling the life out of a game and trying to ensure superiority at set pieces at both ends of the pitch. Which is an overly simplistic summation, but about right really and a valid approach for a small club to take if it wants to punch above its weight. Sanchez may have tried the same but got his recruitment and his coaching wrong. Whatever, the point stands: in England attractive football is seen as a luxury that average clubs can’t afford to buy into.

Then what to make of Roy Hodgson? Certainly the man hasn’t won enough points, but under him the team is passing, passing, passing. Over-passing sometimes (Brede Hangeland excepted, he says mischievously). This was first obvious when Chris Baird was still about. Rather than seeing his typical backspin angled lob every time he got the ball, we saw Jimmy Bullard haring over and giving Baird an easy pass. It meant we kept the ball, with Bullard typically finding Murphy, who would find the next man and attempt to string something worthwhile together. It’s definitely passing football. It might not be what we need, and it might not be being done very well, but it is aspiring towards something worthwhile.

Which to me is a good thing. Fulham is in some ways a club out of time anyway. Most of the grounds we go to now are fairly similar, and of course the Cottage is very unique. This and other minor oddities are what appeal to many of us. Even now people are complaining that the team’s too soft, and it is! Which again marks it out as a team that’s not made for the modern era.

Roy Hodgson seems to be moving the club in a pleasing direction. Of course none of this matters at all if he can’t eventually find some wins, but in the context of modern football it has to be said that things are shaping up reasonably well at Fulham, if you like this sort of thing. There will always be some who would prefer to win ugly than to lose in style, and if we lose six in a row to start next season it’ll be hard for anyone to resist such a stance, but if Roy can build on what he’s started, combining passing football with an acceptable number of points, well we’re alright again, aren’t we? That’s the crux: we need to be better, however we go about things, but if we can get better with Roy’s passing approach, well that’d be fantastic, whatever division we’re in.

Musical youth

Do you remember The Big Match Live?

That was when football was a bit more innocent.  For some reason I remember Liverpool beating Watford 3-2 in about 1985, and Paul Walsh scored a couple.   Anyway, the genuinely excellent twohundredpercent has an archive of all the old football theme tunes.   I’m downloading it now, and am very excited.

News!

Right, no more fannying around in spreadsheets. This is the news:

Collins John is back! Having seen his value fall faster than Andy Johnson in the penalty box, he’s back at ours for treatment. Is it a ruse though? Last year you’ll recall that Collins scored three against Man City up there, one of which was allowed. He also scored against the same opponents two years ago. How about that? Secret weapon?

Fulham linked with young Darlington goalkeeper. Okay.

Richard Dunne is 50/50 for the weekend’s game. Richard Dunne and I go way back. I lived in Ireland from 2002-2004, and a good mate of mine lived right near Lansdowne Road and we had tickets for many sporting events there (including Shelbourne vs Deportivo La Coruna!). It’s a fantastic old stadium, with terraces at one end and a stand that shakes when the Dart train passes through it. Anyway, back then Richard Dunne was not the colossus he is now. Or he was, but not in the same way. Richard Dunne was extremely wide astern. That’s all. He was having issues at the time and it’s great to see that he’s made such a success of himself, but back then he was very conspicuously big.

Harry Redknapp denies interest in Jimmy Bullard. The rumours are that he’ll stick with us come what may and re-evaluate things in January, but that could be as made up as the original rumours. So who knows?

We will owe Leeds money if David Healy scores a fifth goal.  Not the highest expectations then!

There! Back to normal.

Dirty pressure

Based on discussions below, here are ‘dirty’ and ‘pressure’ points for all our games this season, as well as the Bet365 odds for the game on the right.

As you can see by my made up ‘pressure’ metric, we really did batter Reading. The idea that we should have changed the team for the Liverpool match is understandable, but it is very very clear why this was not done.

And to further discussions, to me the ‘dirty’ indicator seems to have little correlation with results. The ‘pressure’ one does. The games we felt hard done by are the games where our pressure score is higher than the opposition’s. Similarly, there are some games where we were fortunate to get away with what we got.

It seems fairly clear to me that you win football matches by creating chances, not by committing fouls. In away games this year we have out-fouled, out carded, out all sorts our opponents, but until Reading we had not outplayed anyone. That’s the difference maker (this is stating the obvious to the extreme, of course, but there’s no evidence that fouling people more or getting more yellow cards actually helps, which was the original point of all this).

And this is last season.   What a battering we took on our travels!  I was just behind the goal in the Portsmouth game, Niemi was in superhuman form that day.   This all shows just how unusual the Reading win was.   It’s eerie how closely this year’s home draw with Derby follows last year’s with Watford.

Fight or flight? Here come the numbers.

Long exploration, the conclusions of which might not be reliable… work in progress

Transfer make believe

The Sun says that Portsmouth want Jimmy Bullard.

Can’t see that. West Ham or Villa would make sense – both teams need a good midfielder – but Portsmouth? Seems a strange one.

The other thing in all this is something I found on a Villa blog. Bullard will soon be 30. He doesn’t play like it, and certainly he has a few more years in the tank, but when your game revolves around pegging it all over the place… well, the post-30 decline could be harsh. Speculation though.

Nothing much to say today. I guess people are resigned to relegation, the Official site has a nice piece about how Healy and McBride like playing together, but this just makes me regret the fact that they haven’t been doing it all year. If they had… how did McBride injure himself against Middlesbrough anyway?

Meanwhile, With a Plum goes through the whole “they don’t care” thing again.  I agree with him.

Dogs

After the game a few of us went to Wimbledon dogs. I really didn’t feel like it but it was probably better than sitting at home annoying Hady. We got there, paid a gold-skinned weasel of a man five pounds to get in, and strolled up to the punters’ lounge. This is like a giant… what? maybe a college lecture theatre that’s looking out onto a dog track through glass. Strange.

Anyway, we’re there and the first race goes and there go six greyhounds whizzing round a track. I don’t know who they are and spending money guessing who’s going to win seems a bit odd to me in this black, black mood. Some people cheer: “go on six!” and so on. I watch to see how happy the dogs look. They get to the end and yes, they’ve enjoyed their run. Okay, well that cheers me up a bit. I sit and take things in. My brain replays Jermain Pennant’s near post drive. Whoosh! Why didn’t Keller move?

I went to get some food. Chips and mushy peas for me, my mate Wilf’s having a hot dog and chips. My polystyrene tub of mush looks pretty tasty actually, Wilf’s hot dog has a black look about it, blackened onions smothering a long slimy sausage below. I haven’t a fork so make do with my fingers, which later end up covered in bright green mushy pea sediment. While we’re waiting we talk about the dogs and how they’re going to go. Are the rumours about pinching their balls to make them go faster true? Wilf gets a text: “I hear they stick ginger up their arses”. We could try that with Diomansy Kamara, I think to myself.

Someone overhears us. His name is Bookie Jack and he must be seventy at least. He reminds me of the cigarette smoking man in the X-Files. Bookie Jack is in charge of the bookies who stand down trackside and take money for nothing. He tells us that one of the trainers in particular is quite straight. Quite straight? The implication is that others are not. What does he mean? Well, just that this trainer exercises the dogs properly, plays by the rules, does the right thing. Alright, I think, this is something to latch onto. We head off to the Tote stand and put £5 on this trainer’s dog.

And it wins. Our fiver gets us… £8.50 back. Alright, it had been a favourite. Not to worry, I have an in now, I’m an ethical investor. I proceed to bet on this trainer’s dogs all night. They don’t win again until the last race, at which point I make £4.50 for a £2 stake. Some of my friends are throwing tenners at the bookies, chasing a big win, but £2 here and there is more than enough for me. I’m betting on the good guys, not with any expectations of winning but because it seems like the right thing to do. In goes Pennant’s shot again. The whole crowd is stunned into a final silence. Rats.

The clock ticks on and I’ve gone into myself again. There’s laughter and joy all around but now I’m staring at the glass, still wearing my coat even though I’m indoors. It’s time to go home and watch Match of the Day, to see if things still look bad for Fulham. Keller definitely should’ve saved the first shot, and what happened on the second? Now the pundits are talking about who the third team to go down will be. We’re in a two team bracket of shame with Derby County. Birmingham, Bolton and Reading are all discussed as relegation mates, and again I sit and think that we must be better than these teams. But we’re not are we?

Density again

Further to discussions, here’s where most of our players spent most of their time.  As you can see, in front of a right-leaning back four is a midfield that… well you’ve got Murphy behind, then Davies, Dempsey (hidden by substitutes’ shirts here) and Bullard all very close and very central.  This, I suspect, was part of the short passing philosophy Roy’s been trying to implement, but with a well-drilled defence like Liverpool’s perhaps you need a bit more width.  I mean, I don’t know, but this is extraordinarily compact (going forwards).    In the middle of all this Javier Mascherano was generally spoiling things and pinging the ball around to start counter-attacks.