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.