More things
Great stuff on the official site today.
Leon Andreasen on his West Ham dismissal:
“I can’t explain what was going through my mind. It was an overreaction from my point of view, but I just shouted out what I think everybody wanted to shout out, because it was so obvious,” he recalls. “But that’s in the past now, these things happen in football.”
Indeed.
On Sunday’s game:
“When we think that we’ve won it and people think that we’ve won it, that’s when it’s most dangerous. Take the game against Sunderland. People thought we were going to win that, and maybe we did as well, but it didn’t happen. So we need to think the exact opposite way. We need to focus on the game, focus on what Roy tells us to do and just play our game, not go into it feeling overconfident that we’re going to beat them, because this won’t be easy.
And some words from super-sub Nevland:
“This is what I came for and I just want to contribute to keeping Fulham up and I’m doing that at the moment. I had a bad period in March when I didn’t do well and that’s frustrating for a player. I just had to keep working hard and I’ve got my rewards.”
On another note (he says donning a beret and settling into Pretentious Corner), recently I’ve been thinking a lot about what it is to be humble, to lack ego, to show humility, and that sort of thing. You’ve probably heard of Achilles because of his tendon, but the main thing with him was that he was widely regarded as the greatest warrior in Ancient Greece (he’d had a choice of a short and glorious life or a long and mediocre one and chose the former, but that’s a story for another day). Well, another great warrior was Diomedes: he was said to be the second greatest after Achilles, and was particularly famous for never committing hubris.
Hubris is the showing of excessive pride, arrogance perhaps, and really was a big deal in Ancient Greece. Any act of hubris was usually followed by some kind of comeuppance and Diomedes was famous for knowing himself, his limitations, and acting in a very wise and respectful manner at all times. It, allayed with his prowess as a warrior, made him the extraordinary man he was.
Roy Hodgson’s team have shown a lot of Diomedes like fight lately. They have said the right thing at every turn (famously and brilliantly that the chances of success had gone from tiny to small after Man City away), neither getting carried away nor losing belief. It’s been just about perfect and makes it very easy to not just like what’s going on, but to really warm to it, to believe in it, and to want to be a part of it. Roy and his players are doing the right thing the right way.
I can’t wait for Sunday.
Talk not of flight, for I shall not listen to you: I am of a race that knows neither flight nor fear, and my limbs are as yet unwearied.
Diomedes
Good point. That’s one of the big reasons I support Fulham. They go about the game the proper way. Would I like to have Premiership titles and European success? Of course. But at the same time, I wouldn’t want to lose our identity.
Great quote at the end. Really really up for it.
Echo what has been said above. We all look on enviouslly at the big clubs up top with their billion sof pounds and star players, but at the end of the day we are Fulham and we are gentleman from top to bottom.
Whatever happens, Roy has done a good job and got us playing some good football. I’m proud of the boys again!
As something of an ancient scholar/scholar of the ancients, maybe you can help me. For ages I have been after a quote; from a Roman solider, which goes something like: We had a system, it was working perfectly well and then we got a command from on high to change the system and so we started all over again.. or something like that… any ideas?
ah, hubris … best non-football example I can think of was former Senator Gary Hart of Colorado. He was a presidential candidate when he responded to an article about whether he was cheating on his wife. In a press confrerence he responded along the lines of “If you don’t believe me, follow me around. You’ll see there’s nothing there.” A Miami paper did just that, and within 24 hours had photos of the good senator coming out of an apartment belonging to one Donna Rice. Presented with the opportunity to get a blue jeans commercial if she spilled the beans, she did just that. Hart’s career was toast. The Miami reporter said that it never occurred to his paper to detail someone to shadown the senator until he brought it up.
Sorry, Red; that’s only ancient history to some of this site’s younger readers.
I suspect Hunter S Thompson wrote about Gary Hart. Will have to remind myself this evening.
Red S - have passed the query along to a teacher friend. He may be able to find out.
Nice to see a bit of the old classical learning on the site, WMC. And there`s a lot of truth in what you say.
I know the saying Red S means but can`t quote it properly. All I can remember It goes something like this: “We trained hard and just as we were ready for battle, we would be reorganised . . .”
GOT IT thanks for your help - Craven Cottage Newsround has achieved what hundreds on a site called Quoteland could not - even if it is a misquoted quote it is still great and so applicable to so many situations today:
We trained hard . . . but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
Usually misattributed to Petronius Arbiter (AD 27-66)
Hurray! I’m very happy about this. I like the idea of excellent Roman quotes being rediscovered here.
PS If anyone knows anything about the Scythians please pipe up!
It`s a great quote, isn`t it? When I was working, someone passed it round surreptitiously. It exactly summed up what was going on there.
Do you know the alleged correct attribution, Red S?
What`s the Scythian connection, WMC?
I`m proud to be a contributor to such an erudite site!
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/List_of_misquotations