Waiting for Johnson

The Dude: Fuck sympathy! I don’t need your fuckin’ sympathy, man, I need my fucking johnson!
Donny: What do you need that for, Dude?

—–

Maude Lebowski: Does the female form make you uncomfortable, Mr. Lebowski?
The Dude: Uh, is that what this is a picture of?
Maude Lebowski: In a sense, yes. My art has been commended as being strongly vaginal which bothers some men. The word itself makes some men uncomfortable. Vagina.
The Dude: Oh yeah?
Maude Lebowski: Yes, they don’t like hearing it and find it difficult to say whereas without batting an eye a man will refer to his dick or his rod or his Johnson.
The Dude: Johnson?

—–

Nihilist: We believe in nothing, Lebowski. Nothing. And tomorrow we come back and we cut off your chonson.
The Dude: Excuse me?
Nihilist: I said
[shouting]
Nihilist: We’ll cut off your johnson!
Nihilist #2: Just think about that, Lebowski.
Nihilist: Yeah, your wiggly penis, Lebowski.
Nihilist #3: Yeah and maybe we stomp on it and squoosh it, Lebowski.

Mole watch

West Ham were rumoured to be in for Andy Johnson, remember? Well, according to a TiFF poster, Johnson’s agent has decided to use this to drive a hard bargain.

But of course, if West Ham will pay silly money – and past form shows that they will – then we have to as well.

Or we go to plan B. Which is apparantly where the Mario Gomez stuff comes from. Which, given the timing, would appear to be the club feeding stories to the papers to remind Johnson’s agent that there are other forwards out there.

New Times bit

Posted here. Thought I ought to say something about the Johnson thing.

Stoor aboard at last

Stoor signs.

Roy:

“I am delighted that Fredrik has joined us officially today. He is a player I have followed for some time through my contacts with the Swedish national team. I watched him closely with his club side and we did a lot of research on him.

“Of course I had the opportunity to see him at close hand in the three matches that Sweden played in Euro 2008. and we decided that this was the player for us at right back. Certainly with John Pantsil and Fredrik Stoor we have excellent cover for that position for the coming season.”

News and notes

Last night we drew 0-0 with Palace in a friendly that featured few first teamers. Nick W was there and may be able to tell us more in the comments, but the big news was the new kit being revealed. I’m tempted to say “we’ll win nothing in that” but I suppose there’s more to winning games than what you’re wearing. Not sure I like it though. Will have to inspect it close up.

But never mind that, read this!

ROY HODGSON is bidding to complete a £33million revamp of his Fulham forward line by snapping up Mario Gomez from Stuttgart.

Craven Cottage boss Hodgson has stolen a march on Arsenal and his negotiators are understood to have agreed a fee of around £15million with the German club.

Bobby Zamora has already joined from West Ham for £6.3m, while ex-Crystal Palace striker Andy Johnson has arrived for £12m from Everton. Now

German international Gomez is close to agreeing personal terms.

Funnily enough I mentioned Gomez earlier in the year. He’d had a poor Euro 2008 tournament, but had scored loads in Germany, so I figured he might be good value. Interesting to see us linked with him. Anything to it? Surely not, but what a story to come from nowhere!

Advertisement:

And, if you haven’t got one yet, please consider purchasing this year’s Fulham Review, which people seem to like and which I think is good value. Head over to www.godsfoot.com to place your order!  It’s written by me and with contributions from Chopper, Rob from Following the Fulham, Jamie R, Dan from With A Plum, Colin from Championship At Best, my mate Mart, and also Jon “Ormondroyd” Hall has contributed some photos.  So there’s a lot of good stuff in there.

Narcissism today

In 1997 I graduated from university. The start of my life, proper. Exciting but frightening. What would I become? Of course I had no idea. Even if I had had any goals – I did not – history had shown me to be less than determined in these things. I would, as usual, see what happened. I would hope for the best.

—–

At the same time Andrew Johnson was trying to break into the Birmingham City team. The knock on him was that he was too small to play at such a high level.

—–

I ended up in IT. I am not analytically minded, or not to the extent that people who are good at IT are. Luckily much of my job involved sales, or support, or playing cricket in the yard in front of the offices. After two years of this I got a job at a proper consultancy. This exposed my limitations. I was out of work before long and in need of new direction.

—–

Andy Johnson scored 8 goals for Birmingham in 83 games. He missed a penalty in the 2001 league cup final. Birmingham wanted Clinton Morrison of Crystal Palace. So they paid £4.25 million for him, and sent Andy Johnson along too.

—–

I quickly found a job with a prestigious market research company. With confidence fluctuating between zero and very low depending on how many menial tasks I had mismanaged that day, life was still pretty crap. I learned new skills, showed promise with my writing (my bosses made me streamline, cut words, get the point across), but still I struggled. My home life fell apart. Bizarrely, I lost about 3 stone (without meaning to, and I wasn’t big anyway) and I had no idea who I was or what I was doing.

—–

Andy Johnson had found a home. He scored 32 goals and Crystal Palace were promoted. Then he scored 21 in the Premiership, causing people to really think about him as a potential England player. How had they missed this? This player was a throw in to get Clinton Morrison to Birmingham! Woops!

But Palace were relegated. Johnson wanted to leave. They kept hold of him and he scored 15 more goals in the Championship, but the vultures were circling. Palace failed to get promotion and a move to the big time seemed certain.

—–

To escape my life I moved to Ireland. It worked. Despite spending most of my days lurching between yet more professional and personal disasters, I evolved. Given time out, time to reflect, time to make mistakes away from people I knew, I – to borrow a cliche or two – grew as a person, found myself. I realised the importance and value of much that I had left behind. I moved back and got a job at an insurance company. Not an interesting job, but a good one. Raymond Chandler had worked in insurance; it couldn’t be that bad.

—–

Andy Johnson had been selected for England, partly as a concession to his threat to play for Poland. On his debut he played on the right wing and didn’t get much of a look in, but he started a game during England’s summer ‘05 tour of the US. In 2006 Everton outbid Wigan and Bolton and bought him for a massive £8.6 million. His star was shining bright; Clinton Morrison’s career had not gone so well. Strange how fortune swings around.

—–

The work at the insurance company was surprisingly easy. My experiences in the last five years had somehow caused something to click. The strict working day (830-430) gave me time to focus on other things, like football. And after some time apart I moved back in with Hade. We were (and still are) very happy.

—–

Johnson’s time at Everton has been a qualified success. While far from elite, he has proved himself to be a valuable forward, capable of scoring goals, working hard, and playing either up front or out wide. He scored 22 goals in 74 games, a fair return. In his last season at Everton £11.25 million signing Yakubu became the focus of the team’s attack, scoring 21 in 29 games. Johnson, struggling with injury, managed only 5, but his harrying play, his threatening pace, and his unselfish outlook had all helped the team.

—–

Following a period of uncertainty at the insurance company I resigned and followed an old boss to a new company. Here I have thrived. I was promoted last week after just over a year’s service. But next week I may be out of a job.

—–

Today Andy Johnson should be announced as a Fulham player.

—–

What’s next?

Everton confirm acceptance of Johnson bid

Here.

Everton have agreed a deal with Fulham to sell Andrew Johnson.

The 27-year-old striker has been given permission to discuss personal terms with the London club with a view to a multi-million pound switch to Craven Cottage.

A Club statement read: “Everton can confirm that it has agreed an eight figure sum with Fulham for the services of Andrew Johnson. This is subject to the player agreeing personal terms and negotiating a medical.”

Johnson did not travel with the rest of the Everton squad to the USA for the pre-season preparations in Chicago and Denver.

He was Everton’s Club record signing when he arrived from Crystal Palace for £8.6m in the summer of 2006.

He has netted 22 goals from 74 appearances in his two years at Goodison Park.

Here follows some tactical rambling to explain why this will help:

Here’s what pace can do.  On the left we see a team using a high line to defend against us.  They do this because when you have a high line you have less far to travel when you win the ball.  If you win the ball on your own 18 yard line you have to travel the whole length of the pitch to create a chance.  If you have a high line everyone’s further forward, so when you win the ball you’ll be a lot nearer the opponent’s goal.

That’s the theory.  But against pace you can’t play a high line or, as you can see on the left, the opponent can pick you off with through balls.   So you have to defend a bit deeper to stop this happening.

What this does is make it harder to squeeze the game in midfield.  If the defence retreats then the midfield has to as well.  If it doesn’t there’s loads of space *between* the two units, which can be exploited by teams with attacking midfielders like Gera, Bullard and Davies.  If a team does retreat that makes it harder for it to attack us, as up to eight of the defending players will be deep in their own half.  And our players will naturally be that bit further forward when in possession.  Which is a good thing.

All because we have some proper pace.

That’s the theory anyway.

For the fan who has everything

Slavia Prague have pushed the envelope:

You can buy one here.

It’s an exciting time for off-field fun:

Middlesbrough’s new kit is waterproof

Hummel have released the new Zanzibar kit, and, let’s face it, you won’t find anything like this in the Premiership

And Lille have moved to Canterbury kits.  Which means that Airness have lost another account

Meanwhile, a certain bald headed forward is having a medical at Fulham.

Ulsan v Fulham – highlights

Good find by JBLC on TiFF:

It’s great to hear the words “zoltan gera” shouted so much. Very pleasing.

Also from TiFF, here’s highlights from Fredrik Stoor’s last game for Rosenberg (presumably).  He scores a belter.

Scorchio

What a day!

We’ve just come back from a bbq in Ealing.  I say this proudly because everyone seems to have bbq’s in the summer and we don’t, so now I feel somehow part of the social whirlwhind that is Hot London in the Summer.

The downside of this is that when the sun shines, pale people burn, particularly pale people with bald heads.  So I’ve suffered this afternoon, suffered a burning that may take some time to come undone.   Against that, we were at a long-time Reading fan’s house, and it was nice to be able to have our idle football chat from a victorious perspective.    Graham really doesn’t know what to expect from the Championship; I reasoned that if Hull and Stoke are the types to prosper then surely Reading will walk it, but we both knew that things don’t always work out that way.   It could so easily have been us, of course.

We also made the obligatory “you can have Seol back if you want” jokes.   I bring this up because last night in Merton Sainsbury’s (this is why we’re not at bbq’s – too busy at supermarkets) I had a look at the Fulham and Hammersmith Chronicle, which is the nearest thing to a local beat coverage we’ll get.   Anyway, there was a big thing about Hameur Bouazza being frozen out (what does “frozen out” really mean?  How do you freeze someone out?  And why would you do it?) – the gist being that those not on the plane to Korea are not in Roy’s plans.   Roy said something about having 20 or so players fighting for 11 shirts.   Bouazza is not one of the chosen 20.

I remember when Lawrie Sanchez signed him Adrian Boothroyd said that Bouazza wasn’t guaranteed to start for Watford anyway, which seemed like sour grapes at the time but has probably been shown to be fair.   I’ve talked before about seeing glimpes in players and using that to make judgements, but just because a player *can* do amazing things, he may not be an amazing player.   Bouazza needs polish, but Roy has presumably decided to polish players who are a little nearer to the finished article.

It also talked about how Roy had given Seol a bit of a bollocking, questioning his desire by wondering aloud why the winger isn’t more worried about not playing more often.  Roy suggested that he’d like to see more hunger there, but really, it’s entirely lacking.

To sign off, Roy said something along the lines of “we’d sell these players if someone wanted to buy them, otherwise they’ll have to stay as Fulham players”, which is quite a damning indictment of the Sanchez transfer policy.    Football’s funny like this – so subjective still – but you wonder how long teams can continue to “back their manager” in the transfer market when the manager has no proven record of spending money well.   You wouldn’t give an unproven trader in the City £26 million (would you?  maybe you would) to spend as he felt right; funny how much this happens in football.

We expect Andrew Johnson to sign next week.   The Bullard away stories have been confirmed by a couple of papers, but I really do think they were just Roy testing the market.

More must read number work at Championship At Best

Colin brings us that bit nearer to understanding the world…

News and notes

After a superb curry and a lot of wine I fell asleep on the lounge floor and the day’s troubles were gone. Now I’m awake and drinking Just Juice pineapple (a favourite since I was very young) and looking nervously at the sunny street below and wondering what to do with the weekend. Do we have news? Some:

Rangers manager Walter Smith on Steve Davis:

“We haven’t been able to reach an agreement with Fulham on Davis, which is disappointing. It’s frustrating, because we know that the lad would like to come to Rangers.

“Fulham came back to us on the deal, but we can’t agree on the financial aspect. So that’s where it stands at the moment. It’s disappointing for both parties because Steven has indicated that he would like to join us.

“It is still early, though, in the sense that there are still five weeks of the transfer window to go. But that’s where things stand just now.”

Nathan Ashton has gone to Wycombe on a permanent deal. Good luck to him. He played once for us and we won. So that’s good and I’m sure he enjoyed it.

The Star says that Everton will use part of the Andy Johnson money to buy Joao Moutinho.

Johnson is expected to complete his £10.7m switch to Fulham in days

And TiFF moles say he was at Motspur yesterday. So, one way or another, it looks like we’ll be signing him. The natural reaction is to think that it’s a lot of money – and it is – but when you see what the likes of Roy Keane are doing at Sunderland, it’s a serious reminder that you have to keep blasting away at improving your squad in this league or you’ll be left behind. And with Johnson up front we’ll certainly be better than before.

Our Roy recently talked about flirting with the idea of a holding midfielder. Well that midfielder could be Vincenzo Grella of Torino, says the Indy.

Channel 4 – which has always had a finger on the Italian football pulse – says we’ve made an official offer for Grella.

The Indy story also reminds us that Fredrik Stoor is not with us yet. But he’ll sign next week, finally.

Right, there we are. Still a lot going oh, eh? Whether this lot manage to gel in time for the season is anyone’s guess.

Finally, have you got your Fulham Review.  I’m delighted to say that people seem to be really enjoying it again, so I’m confident that at £5 you’re getting good value.   www.godsfoot.com to order.   Thanks!

Had enough

I could write a lot about today, but it’s considered bad form to wash your dirty laundry in public so I’ll keep it brief for everyone’s sake.

In short: I got promoted this morning, interviewed someone for a job after that, but there is no job, which we both knew going in, bad times at the company, possible layoffs.  So no payrise to go with promotion, which is fine because I’d feel terrible about getting a payrise when others are being let go, but it’s bad because we’d sort of banked on it (it would’ve been a good payrise), but there we go.  The layoffs though.  Bad times are coming.

And it’s times like these when you bloody resent pricks like Cristiano Ronaldo and Ashley Cole and every other footballer who doesn’t know how bloody lucky they are.

Sorry.  We have all this going on, and read that Fulham are bidding £10 million for a half-useful centre-forward, the same Fulham that would’ve had to lose half its non-playing staff (who aren’t earning in a year what some of the players earn in a month) last year had Danny Murphy not scored with a header at Portsmouth.  It’s mad, it really is.  The obvious way to end this would be to say that we need football to escape all this shit, and we do, but we could still escape into football if it wasn’t disappearing up its own arse in pursuit of more and more and more and more money.

This Bullard thing

Various reports have been linking Jimmy Bullard with other teams this summer. It’s been hard to take seriously – the player means a lot to Fulham – but the stories have persisted.

Here’s an example, from The Times:

Wigan Athletic are trying to re-sign Jimmy Bullard. The midfield player joined Fulham for £2.5 million two years ago but has been put up for sale

(my emphasis)

Someone on TiFF wrote to the Times and was smartly rebuffed. The constructive gist was that while we hear some things that clubs/managers/etc make public (for their own reasons), much goes on that we don’t know about, including off the record briefings.

The Times have since stressed that they put their gossip in the transfer gossip page and “solid reportage” (e.g. has been confirmed from both ends of the story) in their Window Watch.  This story is in the Window Watch.

No smoke without fire? The Sun persists with Andy Johnson talk

It’s in big letters too.

Still don’t know about this.  It seems like a lot of money for a player who’s not a genuine star.   We’ll see if there’s any truth to the story soon enough.

Guardian fantasy football

Does anyone want to join a sort of CCN mini-league?  I’m not always a huge fan of these things, but this looks excellent.

As far as I can tell it’s free.  And, the good thing is that it’s a bit more complicated than the usual ones, so things like tackling, blocking shots, accurate crossing, etc, etc, all count towards scoring.   It looks really good, and, if nothing else, it’ll give Colin an easy data source for his stats work!

Main page here.

Scoring system here.

Players and things here.

Drop me an email at richallen7 at yahoo dot com if you’d like to play.    I need the email addresses to send out invites.

Cheers!

Listening to the fans

I just got a survey from the club.   Here’s an excerpt:

With a bit of luck everyone else will answer this way and this abomination of a trend can be terminated for ever.  I don’t know why it started or what they thought we’d gain from it, but I really do hate it.   Do we not cheer enough when we score?   I think we do.

If they want to americanise the football experience I suggest experiments in lighting.  You know we have those electronic ad boards now?   Well why not, for night games, just before kickoff, switch off the floodlights and make the hoardings glow green for a bit?

No, I see that this would be rubbish too.

There was another question about clappers.  I said they were good but I regret it now.   I did think they helped against Birmingham, but in the early season matches against Bolton I think it might seem a bit weird, like kissing someone for giving you a polo mint or something.   A bit over the top.

Anyway, no to goal music.  That’s the message to take from all this.

Newspause and Adrian Chiles

What is there to say? The Sun is saying we’re going for Andy Johnson, Frerik Stoor is still imminent, and isn’t it about time we heard something about Simunic?

Anyway. I’ve nearly finished Adrian Chiles’ “We don’t know what we’re doing”, which is his book about being a football supporter. I think it’s fairly safe to say that if you like Chiles you’ll like the book, if you don’t you won’t. It’s very… him.

And he’s a legit supporter (West Brom), that much is clear. He talks about the pessimism involved with these things, he knows that away crowds are generally more positive than home crowds, he gets it. There’s none of that awful Tim Lovejoy crap that we must accidentally come across from time to time. No, Chiles is very much for real, and it’s an interesting enough book because of that.

Good points: well for one thing he tells of a relegation season, of the hopes and fears associated with this, and how as the games count down the hope dwindles away. In this sense his story is our story pre-Reading last year; we got the happy ending. Reading this you can easily see our alternative route into the Championship, had a few things not gone our way. The book doesn’t so much contain insights as affirmations, observations that you can nod to, chuckle at, and say “yeah, I feel that too”. So that’s good and fun and nice to read. Also there’s a Zoltan Gera mention: “our gifted but under-performing Hungarian”… so, we’ll see what we get there.

Negatives: it does seem as though Chiles has realised he has to write a book, found some random fans who agree to talk to him because he’s famous, and woven their stories into the narrative. Which isn’t a bad thing – most of them are humourous, sad, touching, etc – but it can seem a little staged. This feels like the wrong word, but it all does get a bit repetitive. The book, which isn’t long, could’ve been half the length it is.

Otherwise a nice diverting read. I’m the sort who carries 3-4 books around with me so that I can read according to my mood, and I’ve found that this has been an excellent item to have, providing as it does some easy, familiar escapism about the problems with being a football supporter. So money well spent.

Nothing else to declare. Have you all ordered your Fulham Review? www.godsfoot.com to do so.

More good stuff from Roy

Here

“The last I heard Rangers reiterated their initial offer which was
refused by the club,” he said after Fulham’s 3-1 win over Celtic.

“Steve’s loan turned out to be exceptionally good for Rangers and
Steve himself. He enjoyed his time up there and was a regular starter.
He fears it won’t be easy to break into our midfield, which is fairly
stable.

“But players have values. We paid a lot of money for him and think
he’s a very good player. I’m perfectly happy to work with him and keep
him at Fulham.

“Of course if he’s going to leave us it will have to be because
we’ve received the correct offer. The lad is worth the sort of transfer
money we’re asking.”

“There won’t be many more signings but we haven’t ruled out bringing
in a couple more in key positions to help us out,”

“We’ve done quite a few things already and I’m very pleased with
what we’ve done. We’re looking at another striker and flirting with the
idea of a defensive midfield player.

“We may also need some cover at centre-back because we’re fairly
light in that area. If we resolve those three situations we will have a
strong squad.”

On the same subject, The Times said that Fredrik Stoor is expected soon…

Yesterday’s goals

Thanks to someone on TiFF, here they are.

Great goal by Nevland, who seems to have a knack for goalscoring, brilliant volley by Zamora, Andreasen’s goal was too quick for the cameras. Nice.