Craven Cottage Newsround

I hadn’t realised but there was a fair bit of gossip on the internet last week saying that Diomansy Kamara was on his way to Stoke on a loan-then-buy deal. Another rumour says that he was offered to Ipswich and Cardiff too. However, the loan deadline passed at the end of March and our man is staying put. Good. He looked occasionally handy on Saturday and played quite well at Sunderland earlier in the year too. So hopefully he’ll get another go this week.

There’s been some pretty good talk on TiFF today. The thing that grabbed me was a small discussion about how Roy was probably in a bit of a quandry regarding our midfield: he realised that we were excessively cagey in a five, but too lightweight in a four. So to start with we tightened up in that 4231 I liked so much, but this didn’t get the results he’d hoped for so we reverted to a 442, with some success.

What it’s meant is that Jimmy Bullard’s really been a bit quieter and that our defence has been a bit more exposed. The thinking’s reasonable though: at this point it’s worth risking more on the off chance that these risks come off. We don’t, as the saying goes, want to die wondering.

All of which makes me think of Carlos Bocanegra. He scored five goals last year and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think he might have done so again given enough appearances. The question is, do you believe that playing Bocanegra over Hughes (or even Konchesky) would result in five more goals conceded? It’s very hard to know. But as I watched us win all those corners against Derby at the end I really did wish we had Bocanegra in the box to get on the end of them. Dempsey too, for that matter.

Finally, a couple of pictures from Saturday. I was a bit too scared for photography, but I couldn’t miss another “rubbish” photo-pun opportunity:

Here(scroll up when the page opens)

I always think that these types of exercise give us another way to look at things. Colin’s work looks at who’s making attacking contributions, passing in a positive way, etc. He shows that our fullbacks are an important part of our attack.

This worries me somewhat, in that fullbacks always seem to be a last resort for teams running out of ideas. I remember Coleman’s last squad used to end up giving the ball to Liam or Franck quite a bit. They had no options and would frequently concede possession, leading to criticism of them, rather than the system (or lack thereof) that placed such an emphasis on their ability to make something out of nothing.

Anyway, have a read. Interesting stuff as always.