Craven Cottage Newsround

Transfer rumours. Do transfer rumours mean anything now? Roy operates without leaks. Much of this might just be made up. Nevertheless:

Mail on Sunday: Benitez to shift Steve Finnan… hmmmm

PSG’s Bernard Mendy (a right back) to join Fulham. DETECTIVE WORK:

Mendy: mon dernier match (Mendy: my last match)

Vous verra-t-on l’année prochaine au PSG ?
Je ne sais pas. Pour l’instant, non.

(I’m thinking: are you coming back to PSG? I don’t know. At the moment, no)

So there we are. No mention of Fulham anywhere though. And I think this is from a post-match interview.  Also, this info’s not on l’Equipe or on France Football, the two big ‘entities’ out there.  Still, who knows?

And the People says we’re going to bid for Louis Saha (£4m)

Well. I’d be very excited by Saha. The injury concern is a very real one, but he can still score goals and is one of the more exciting players in the league. Might be able to help Eddie Johnson. Might find that being ‘the man’ helps him. I dunno. Probably there is better value for money out there though.

Finnan seems unlikely to me.

This is pretty amazing. Matthew and Adam work hard at what they do, and what a reward. The best - BEST! - bookshop in The Independent’s Top 50 Bookshops list.

This startling ranking is for the old store, near to Waterloo. Hade and I nipped into the new Fulham Road shop this morning, just to see what it’s like, and I almost burst into tears. It’s just perfect. You go in and there’s Matthew behind the till on the right. A fiction/new stuff/travel room with three tables of really well chosen titles, clean and smooth shelves all around, then a doorway through to a back room, which has kids’ books, so through from there and there’s another back room containing history and the like, and then - and I love this - a small courtyard out back. I say courtyard, it’s not really a courtyard, but a small, enclosed space with a table, two chairs, and a happy capacity to take sunshine.

I picked up three titles: The Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig (Matthew’s recommendation), Contempt by Alberto Moravia (I bought Boredom by the same author at Shakespeare and Company in Paris earlier in the year and enjoyed that a lot), and finally a copy of The Iliad by Homer, a book I haven’t read since I was 18 but one that I enjoyed hugely back then.

So yeah, Crockatt & Powell is in Fulham. They’re not far from the site of the old Pan Bookshop. Over the road and then right (in the direction of the Cottage). Go in, say hello, and I’m sure you’ll find something you like.

(all of this is Fulham related because Matt has a season ticket at the Cottage)

Here

Typing as I listened:

Roy looks relaxed, had to put his summer plans on hold until after the game. Now hard at work for next season. Pre-season programme, improving the squad and trying to avoid giving Fulham supporters heart-attacks.
Mike Kelly knew Mark Schwarzer from Middlesbrough so enabled us to bring him in ahead of some quite glamourous clubs (Juve, Bayern).
Bringing in more players. Could do with one or two players in most areas; not because the players aren’t good enough, just more players capable of playing at a high level.
Aim to put some distance early on between us and the relegation zone.
Couple of pre-season friendlies: Birmingham and Celtic.
Roy’s off to the Euros, doing some scouting at UEFA’s cost. Part of the technical study group, will be well looked after and see some great football.

Some good stuff at With A Plum lately, especially a post on the enigma that is Clint.

And to continue the linkage, 200percent is doing Euro 2008 previews, starting with Group A.

Here’s the 200percent Playoff Preview too.   It’s Bristol City v Hull.  Whoever wins, Fulham really shouldn’t finish bottom next year.

Just got some info from The Times:

Davies, Bullard, Keller, Hangeland and Murphy

What do you think is special about these five?

The answer is that, according to the Fink Tank analysis, these players were the only players in our squad who were better than the average Premiership player for their position.   The Times use a pretty good analysis that takes everything a player does on a pitch into consideration, using complex mathematical models.   Our players were ranked in the order shown, left to right.

The Fink Tank analysis generally passes the smell test (this year’s player of the year was Ronaldo, followed by David James) so I’m pretty happy with that list of names.  Perhaps reinforces the view that Murphy didn’t deserve the criticism he took last season.   I didn’t get any numbers, but Niemi didn’t rank very well (nor did he last season).  So Roy’s decision to switch to Keller was the right one, according to this.

Avram Grant’s job is at risk.

If John Terry had not slipped over it would not be at risk.

Is Avram Grant to blame for John Terry falling over?

I’m just seeing if NewsNow keep picking me up if I use random titles. And indeed, whether anyone clicks on random titles. This, incidentally, is the name of a terrific Bevis Frond song* (covered by the Blake Babies) that I was listening to on the way to work.

Anyway, this post is really about the eight players released this week. This from the Fulham Chronicle:

Fulham will release eight players, including Carlos Bocanegra, the United States captain. PSV Eindhoven are interested in signing the 28-year-old defender. Philippe Christanval, Ian Pearce, Tony Warner, Simon Elliott, Michael Timlin, Björn Runström and Ismael Ehui are also likely to leave Craven Cottage. Roy Hodgson, the manager, made Mark Schwarzer, the Australia goalkeeper, his first signing of the summer yesterday. The 35-year-old was out of contract at Middlesbrough.

Which is a bit misleading because most of them were out of contract. Bocanegra was in particular, so saying he was released is a bit like saying Mark Schwarzer was released by Boro. In a way. Christanval is a shame - I liked watching him - but as they say in the States, health is a skill, and Christanval doesn’t have it.

Ian Pearce might be one of the more under-appreciated footballers of our time. I remain convinced that he has never really let Fulham down (to the contrary), and if he had been blessed with a more athletic physique people might have been more appreciative of his work. His Fulham ‘moment’ was unquestionably that goal at home to Portsmouth a couple of years ago. Injured to the point where he could hardly walk, Pearce had to stay on the pitch because we’d run out of subs. Well, he didn’t have to stay on the pitch - he could have come off and left us with ten men - but he stayed out there, hobbled around, and amazingly bagged a late equaliser. Sporting heroism of the rarest kind.

*

When you dab your eyes, the tears keep on falling,
And when you blow your nose, it still gets blocked up and runs,
And though you feel like shit, he says you look beautiful,
And he swears by all the saints,
That if he had his chance again, he’d be a diamond.

Is he lying to get what he wants, or does he mean it this time?
Is he running low on affection, and beer and dope,
And an ironing board?
And an unpaid analyst who shags?

(seriously, this is genius)

Well that’s essentially what we wanted, isn’t it?.  An established number 1.

Roy:

After stiff competition from a number of high profile European clubs, I am exceptionally pleased that Mark has chosen to come to Fulham. His credentials on both the domestic and international arenas are impeccable which is reinforced by the calibre of clubs that wanted to sign him. We have some work to do off the field this summer to enable us to compete next season in the Premier League and to avoid the position we found ourselves in a short time ago. Therefore I am very pleased that Mark will be joining us and helping with the task ahead.

I’m happy with this.  Didn’t cost anything, established Premiership player, ought to be in his prime.  Good signing.  Anyone watched him much?

Despite initial reservations, I’m really enjoying the game.  Some thoughts:

Michael Essien is (in my opinion) one of the best midfield players in the Premiership.  To use him at right-back seems like a waste.  Why not use a specialist right-back and let Essien run midfield?   I appreciate that you have to fit Ballack, Lampard and Makalele in there too, but is this fudging worthwhile?

Cristiano Ronaldo is pretty good.  The Times values him at 14 league points over an average player.  That sort of puts things in perspective for us with our summer shopping list.   I haven’t got the latest numbers, but two years ago our best player was Carlos Bocanegra at +5 (this was when he’d scored a lot of goals).   We’d be lucky to find someone who could make that much difference next year, I suspect.

Man Utd are a joy to watch.  What formation are they playing anyway?  Rooney, Tevez, Ronaldo:  how do you control them?

Petr Cech is pretty good, eh?  That double save from the Utd break was terrific.

Chelsea don’t look like anything special out there, but somehow it’s 1-1.   They look less than the sum of their parts though.  Malouda is a fine player but seems neutered in a Chelsea shirt.  What is Joe Cole doing?   Despite all this, you do wonder if they’re not going to win this trophy almost by accident.  Which would be sad because this United side’s as good a team as I’ve seen, but there we are.

Absorbing stuff.

Might as well keep going.

David Healy
What else is there to say? He scored a lot of goals at international level. More than anyone else I can think of, more prolific than Michael Owen, Thierry Henry, anyone probably. And yet…

Healy’s another player who is limited but useful. It’s easy to watch players like this and focus on what he can’t do; as you know by now, I like to think about what a player can bring to the side.

In Healy’s case that’s quite a lot. He can score, and links up very well with McBride. I wish he wouldn’t keep drifting out to the wing, but genius does as it pleases, I suppose.

As I have pointed out many times, had his goal against Boro been allowed he’d have scored 3 in 3 games to start the season. It didn’t all go his way from there, but he’s earned another go I think. Much depends on who he’s playing with.

Brian McBride
And here’s the problem. For all we know McBride’s played his last game for the club. This is a problem because he’s the oil that makes the Kamara and Healy engines run. I’ve given up trying to work out what makes McBride McBride, but suffice it to say he’s more useful than he looks and we miss him when he’s not around. What next then? Who knows. It’s the big uncertainty hanging over the club, and this is surely where the transfer money needs spending. Buy a new McBride! Who knows where you find these players, but it needs doing.

Diomansy Kamara
Also likes playing off a big man, and… well, what can you say about the man? In some ways Diomansy Kamara summed up the season, inconsistent, occasionally brilliant, occasionally very very bad. In the end he came out in credit, just about.

I’ll leave Dio here: Jamie’s done a good overview of him in the forthcoming book.  One thing I would suggest though: if we do want to sell, his late season heroics could lead someone else to overpay for him.

Erik Nevland
Aha! Didn’t he do well? Might have taken him a while to get used to England, but he was brought into the side when in top form, and proceeded to take his chances. Both of his goals were wonderful moments, sealing wins that were there to be thrown away. Looks like he has a bit of everything, quite quick, quite skilful, quite prepared to work, and quite a good finisher. We’ll see whether that means he can be a good first tier striker, or a deadly weapon from the bench. Either is fine. Another good player who played his part in our survival.

Eddie Johnson
You probably won’t see a less convincing first ten minutes in a Fulham shirt than Johnson’s against Man Utd. There’s a saying: “he’s got a head like a fifty pence piece”; Johnson seemed to have feet like fifty pence pieces. However, he did seem to improve and bears watching next season. The pace will create chances, the ability will determine whether he puts them away. Like Bouazza this is someone that Roy can try to improve. If it all comes off we could have a bargain. If not.. well, it was a decent gamble. I look forward to seeing how his career works out.

Overall
There’s much to be positive about, but if this team wants to improve then surely centre-forward is the area where most can be gained. Spending big on any player is a gamble, but if there’s a durable, team orientated goalscorer out there who’d like to play in England, we need to find him.

The lads are almost done.

Independent bookshop on the Fulham Road, co-owned by a Fulham season ticket holder.   It demands your attention!  If you like this sort of thing.

71 pages done.   I have a good handful of Jon Hall/Ormondroyd photos in it which I’m hoping will give the book something it lacked last year.   It’s been a massive slog these last 48 hours, but I think I’m getting there.

In my eyes 2007/08 was all about the midfield.   Lawrie Sanchez managed to shift two limited but physical players (Brown and Diop) and found that Alexey Smertin and Steve Davis weren’t able to do the same job.  Partly because our attacking play didn’t really feature central midfield, and partly because these two weren’t and aren’t physical enough to stop Premiership teams from attacking.  Neither are Bullard and Murphy, the eventual combination, but by then we had learned to retain possession and take a bit of pressure off the back eight players.

Alexey Smertin
His impressive pre-season form may have convinced Sanchez to let other (perhaps more useful) players move on.  I find it hard to get a handle on him, but his age and physique may count against him in this age of giants.  A neat and tidy player, he had a couple of (deflected) goals early on, and seemed to be doing a job of sorts.  But he never did impose himself, either in attack or defence, and is probably due to drop a division at this point.

Steve Davis
See Smertin, but take a decade and a bit from the age column.  It’s an interesting dilemma isn’t it?  A handy player - he has been important to Rangers - and never as bad as people suggested, he did nevertheless struggle to impose himself.  The difference between Bullard and Davis was very obvious.  Davis, I’m fairly sure, could still do a job for Fulham, but there are likely to be a number of clubs interested in him now, so any good offer should probably be accepted.  He could be very useful in a couple of years when Bullard and Murphy slow down, but until then it’s hard to see him being a regular.

Simon Davies
Player of the year, and it’s not close.  At one point seemed to have scored or made every Fulham goal.  Bullard came back and took over dead-ball duties, otherwise Davies might well have been even more tangibly valuable. I’m a little surprised that Davies didn’t play more in the middle of the pitch.  He is, when you think about it, almost identical to Bullard as a player. Much quicker and quieter, he nevertheless plays the game in the same way.  Is this coaching, or would it have been the case anyway?   I don’t think anyone was particularly excited when Chris Coleman announced he was bringing in the Welshman from Everton, but Davies quietly stood out by passing to his teammates, and has grown in stature since then.

Our best player by a distance, and without him we would not have stayed up.

Hameur Bouazza
Another tainted by Sanchez, Bouazza has a lot going for him.  He made my favourite goal of the season, the end-to-end break against Man City at home.  In that game he also nearly burst the net with a free-kick that Hot Shot Hamish would’ve enjoyed.  Against that, he, like many left-wingers, can go missing, and eventually dropped out of favour for the run-in.

One would assume that confronted by a player with such obviously raw gifts, Roy Hodgson could get to work and make something happen.  Is Bouazza coachable?  If he is, he’s in the right place and could yet become a star.  Which sounds excessive, but he has pace, can cross the ball, pass, shoot, and is strong enough for the modern game.  He just needs to put it all together.  I’m hoping Roy can do this.  We haven’t seen many Fulham players improve in recent years; Bouazza is worth watching.

Danny Murphy
A good professional who knows how to play the game.  Sometimes the midfield traffic seemed to overwhelm him, but as Hodgson imposed his quick passing methods on the team Murphy gradually grew in importance.

Dropped for the away match at Derby, he came on and had a fine fifteen minutes, which got him back in the side for the rest of the run in.  We know how important he was then.  A good player and a good man to have around.

Seol Ki-Hyeon
A riddle wrapped up in an enigma.  I remember him slicing through defences as if it was the easiest thing in the world, then doing nothing at all.  Is labelled as lazy, but I don’t know that this is fair.  Seems to be a confidence player who has no confidence.  He tries to beat too many people to get his mojo back, fails, and loses more confidence.   Or perhaps he is lazy.   It really is hard to know.  Clearly there is talent in the man, and clearly we haven’t seen enough of it.  What’s next, I wonder?

Jimmy Bullard
Not much to say that hasn’t been said before.  Has still only played a couple of dozen games for Fulham, and has scored four times in so doing.  A club legend in the making, and a player on whom much depends next season.  His contribution seems somehow magnified by his extrovert presence out there.  You notice Jimmy Bullard, in a good way.

Clint Dempsey
Needed a rest after his long solitary shift up front, Dempsey got it and came back a livelier player.  Didn’t seem to get in the box much late in the season, but did a fair job for Hodgson on the left-flank and is competent in all areas of the game.  It’s worth pausing on that last statement for a second because there isn’t anything he *can’t* do on a football pitch.  Which makes him sound like a better player than he is, which isn’t my intention.  More that he’s unique, and Roy needs to find a way to get the best out of him.  It seems churlish to ask the club’s top scorer to score more goals, but this is clearly something he can do so I’d like to see him do more of it next season.

Leon Andreasen
Could be very good.  Dropped into the team and provided some much needed steel: Roy finally felt comfortable going 4-4-2 and Andreasen lost his place, but this is a player I think Roy will improve fast, and he could be very effective in the years ahead.  A terrific signing who filled a need, I’m looking forward to seeing him develop into the player we’d hoped Diop would be.

Overall
I’m happy with this group.  A first class left-winger would help, but is not something we can’t live without.

So I’ll keep on with my look-backs.

In the meantime, I’m spending today and tomorrow putting together this year’s Fulham Review. I had, of course, forgotten just how much work went into last year’s, and it’s really taking its time coming together. First you need to get all the reports, then paste them in, then find the team news, then the scores, etc, then paste that in, then format it all, then do the next one… this before any attempt at editing has taken place.

[Brian sorted me out re. pics - cheers!]

Slightly new look to this year’s book… I reckon it’s going to work well.

One sometimes wonders what our supporters really expect from our players.  We are extremely quick to point out the flaws (or perceived flaws) in those we do not rate, overlooking the fact that all footballers are flawed, especially those interested in playing for teams like Fulham.

Which is not to say that we shouldn’t aim high - not at all - but we must be realistic. If we have two capable centre-backs who contribute to the team by not conceding goals, well that’s a good thing.  Centre-back is the position where fans seem to have strongest opinions:  player x isn’t dominant enough, gets bullied, isn’t quick enough, etc, etc.

Roy Hodgson decided that his Fulham team would go down attacking.  He had a central midfield pairing of Danny Murphy and Jimmy Bullard, a pairing that would not win many tackles against Essien and Makalele.  Despite this, the Hughes and Hangeland partnership was solid and did not concede many goals.  Yes there were mishaps along the way - both would want to forget Sunderland - but the partership improved to the point where they were on the same wavelength and did a good job of stopping opponents from scoring.  Which is all they’re paid to do.

Carlos Bocanegra
Started the season by drawing a charging foul at Arsenal, a collision that went in the Gunners’ favour and cost us a huge morale boosting win and cost Lawrie Sanchez another line in his own personal record of achievement.  The penalty ended 83 minutes of heart stopping resistance.  Boca was also partly responsible for Boro’s winner the next weekend, and never really established himself in the side after that.  Sure he was sometimes captain, and was always a useful player to have around, but after the impressive enough 06/07 season we might have expected him to move up a level.  It didn’t really happen and he’ll be on his way now.  He’ll need replacing.

Aaron Hughes
Good, understated defender.  Not perfect but good enough; he and Hangeland didn’t get the credit they deserved for keeping things tight during the great escape.  Not a fan favourite, but part of this is surely a Sanchez thing, and part of this is because he doesn’t make a fuss out there.  No yellow cards all season, which is staggering in this day and age.  This tells us that he is a good judge of when to make a tackle, and times these challenges well.  Does it make him soft?  I don’t think so.

Dejan Stefanovic
Having said that, there was a time when this Fulham side were being overrun in midfield and not making it hard for opponents to attack.  Dejan Stefanovic got into the side and straight away was openly making useful tactical fouls.  He drew yellow cards but this allowed the team to regroup.  Sadly this was of limited use because the team could not then defend set pieces, but the idea was good.

A limited defender who did a fair job for a time, but was ultimately part of the problem rather than the solution.  Another whose future ought to lie elsewhere.

Brede Hangeland
Hangeland was exactly the player we needed at the time he joined, and went on to have a fair start to his Premiership career.  A partnership with Hughes that is not particularly quick and not particularly comfortable with the football, but that does its job.  If he improves under Hodgson he could become seriously good.

Overall
I have no problem at all with Hughes and Hangeland as a starting pair, but then what?  Is Adrian Leijer ready?  What about Adam Watts?  Another tricky situation for Hodgson: it’s unlikely he can upgrade the position for sensible money, so will he stick with what he has and see how his younger players perform as and when required?  Leon Andreasen can play the position, but again, is he to be trusted to learn the position in the middle of a season?