Half term report

The season so far:

Mark Schwarzer

If you take Anti Niemi and Kasey Keller, melt both down and recast the remains into one man, you may well end up with Mark Schwarzer.  He can stop shots like Niemi, he can command his area, take crosses and do all the little things like Keller.  Not flawless but who is?  A huge signing and a big part of why we’ve been hard to score against.

B+

John Paintsil

So far so good.  He is quick enough to get out of trouble, takes no chances in defensive areas, and has yet to be outplayed by an opponent.  He also shows leadership on the pitch: when Lampard’s free-kick went in the other day heads visibly went down.  Paintsil went round his team-mates and told them to keep playing, then made a big effort to drive the team forward himself.  You sense that the fun side of his game has detracted from his reputation as a player, because he does seem to do most things reasonably well.  His play against Fernando Torres at Anfield sticks in the mind.

B

Aaron Hughes

I thought he played quite well last year, but this season he has clearly taken his game to a whole ‘nother level.  He and Hangeland seem to work well together, and while opposing forwards tend to drift Hughes’ way for goal kicks, he has generally acquitted himself well in these situations.  Reads the game very well and is one of the cleanest tacklers I have seen.

B+

Brede Hangeland

Occasionally imperious, always effective.  His display at home to Tottenham was as good as I can remember from a centre-back in any game of football.  A huge signing and a player I hope we can keep.

A

Paul Konchesky

On his day he can be as good a left-back as anyone.  Another player who is generally excellent in the tackle.  For a time I felt his crossing was not good enough, but his work with the ball seems to have improved and could be important for us in the second half of the season.  His ability to wrong-foot forwards and play his way out of trouble is a joy to watch (Hull incident excepted).  Another big asset to the team and hopefully he can maintain his form all season.

B

Others:

Fredrik Stoor hasn’t had much of a look in, but has a slightly melancholic expression that worries me; he warmed up all game away at Spurs and looked desperately unhappy.  Looked very neat in possession against Leicester, so I am hopeful that when his chance comes (as surely it will) he will do okay.

Chris Baird has perhaps finally shaken the old monkey off his back and won over the fans. Sage judges said he should have been at centre-back in the first place; others agreed with this on the grounds that he had no business playing like *that* at right back, so must be a centre-back.  I didn’t know what to think.  I thought he had a number of quite good games at right back, but these all seemed to be away from home so his detractors remained ignorant of his usefulness.  This season he has stepped in a couple of times as a defensive midfielder, and done well at that, and of course had a good 8/10 game away to Spurs on Boxing Day.  Decent squad player, whose future at the club probably depends on whether we gain or lose defenders in the window.

Tony Kallio played in our win over Arsenal and did well.  I would be interested to see him play at centre-back.

Simon Davies

So far above his teammates last year he must have won player of the year unanimously.  Bizarrely, he is now conceivably the player closest to losing his place in the side.  How can this have happened?
Technically excellent, he reminded us of what he can produce against Chelsea by serving up the crosses for both our goals.  Had Jimmy Bullard played and taken the free-kicks it might have been another off-day for Davies; as it was he was a hero (to me anyway – crossing like that is to be savoured).  The nice thing with Davies is that the technique is clearly still there (witness through-ball to Johnson at Spurs), so his blip is more likely to be to do with his role in the team and his role in our attacks.  He has been shunted to the left flank to accommodate Dempsey on the right, and no longer has a key role with the ball because Bullard does everything.  Hopefully a corner is being turned because he’s too good not to have an influence on the season.  A terrific player to watch when on form.

C+ (because of the high standards he set himself last season)

Danny Murphy

Player of 2008.  He embodies the team’s transformation from bad to good, and is now a huge player for us.  At least once a game I find myself privately clenching a fist and mumbling “well in!” after he’s halted another opposing attack.  Choose your own cliche, but to me he’s the gravy that makes the meal come together. People underestimate gravy.

A

Jimmy Bullard

Like Britney Spears, perhaps. I have no idea what to make of him.  Massively popular, somewhat annoying, but clearly does what he does very well.  I worry for the future though.

B+

Zoltan Gera

What might have been.  Not far from having at least six goals this year, he has consistently not quite scored and ultimately this seems to affect his overall game.  Now injured.  He called Brede Hangeland a muppet twice on the Christmas video, which seemed harsh.

I will maintain that Gera’s ability to get into goalscoring positions is a considerable asset and that he’ll come good at some point.  Surprisingly, his defensive and aerial work has been better than his attacking play.

C

Clint Dempsey

Held back for weeks by his canny manager, Clint seemed ready to explode when he did get onto the pitch.  His equaliser against Portsmouth was one of the great shouty moments of the season: “I’M BACK!” etc.  And indeed he was.  When inserted into the team he proceeded to play with considerable fire and no little ability, and continued his knack for important goals with two against Chelsea.  Well played.

B+

Others

Dickson Etuhu has done little wrong when called upon in some important matches, and looks to have the physical tools to be a good player.  It will be interesting to see how he develops under Hodgson.

Leon Andreasen has been conspicuous in his absence, which is a shame as he has always looked like a decent player.

Bobby Zamora

In some ways Zamora has all the skills to be the perfect striker, but currently having problems putting the ball in the net.  If he sticks with it he has to come good.  As some have said, just needs to have one go in off his knee/backside/ear to get going again.

B

Andy Johnson

Not at all what I was expecting.  Gone are the days when he leaves vapour trails and defenders in his wake. Against this, he seems to be an intelligent footballer and a very obviously team-first player.  Shown some predatory instincts and has left defenders panting wherever we’ve been.  An asset to the team, no question.  I wonder if he’ll stay fit for the whole season.

B+

Others

Seol did alright when he played, but has since faded from view.  Seems the mental opposite of Dempsey.

Erik Nevland has the famous number 10 shirt and has played well whenever called upon.  I don’t believe we have suffered greatly from his absence, but am inclined to think that he might have been useful in the later stages of a few of the tighter away games.  Suspect that he will have more of a role to play as the season wears on.

Roy Hodgson

King of the World

A+

Dickson Etuhu’s work so far

On TiFF yesterday someone said that Dickson Etuhu’s distribution had been “shocking”.   As is my wont, I quickly retorted with numbers, but I don’t suppose the initial poster saw that, nor would he have been persuaded in any case.

For the record, so far Dickson Etuhu has made 56 passes, 82% of which have gone to a teammate.  Bullard has made 1130 at 83%, Murphy 982 at 79%, Davies (playing wide, remember) has 637 at 76%, Gera 453 at 78% and Dempsey 371 at 78%.

I appreciate that not all passes are created equal, and that Etuhu’s passing has almost entirely been of the short and safe variety, but he’s done what he’s done reasonably well.   And if he hasn’t been the ball magnet that Bullard was (Bullard usually passes 60 odd times a game) he’s been available enough, and has generally played a safe, useable pass that has allowed us to keep the move going.  So far so good, because his main impact is as a defender.  (David Batty had a very successful career doing exactly this.)

First thing to note, against Chelsea he sat very deep (#20) in a typical Murphy position just in front of the back four.  What that meant was that he was able to interrupt a lot of Chelsea attacks.   I found a new toy on the Telegraph site that lets you look at where and what players have done in each game, and I’ve counted all defensive ‘interruptions’ in dangerous areas inside and outside the area (really the area around the six yard box, the edge of the box, and the area just outside).

As we can see, Etuhu managed six interruptions against Chelsea, Murphy five.    That’s eleven attacks broken up, which is pretty useful.  The white numbers in the background are the total “things done” in each area.

As a very vague proxy, I’ve shown Bullard and Murphy against Arsenal, which was a similar game in that we were at home and under pressure.   In that match Murphy also have five interruptions in key defensive areas, but Bullard had none.   I don’t think this necessarily means much, but it does show that Etuhu was certainly getting very involved in important areas against Chelsea, and I suspect it was important that he did.    His attacking contribution is probably best judged when we play a slightly more human side, but for now I think it’s fair to say that he did his bit.

Boring our way up the table

Fulham: Last on Match of the Day for the fourth time in a row!  Are we that boring?  It depends what you are looking for.

In this country we are rightly proud of our chaotic football league.  This season’s unpredictability has only added to that fun.  If you watch enough matches you can be sure of seeing a handful of end-to-end thrillers, people losing their rags, people losing their rags even more in response, people making bad tackles, people running really fast, and sometimes even some good football.  What we don’t get too excited about is the cerebral side of the game, the tactical battle.  English fans, journalists, and managers have never really got involved in that.  Roll your sleeves up, get stuck in:  who wants it more?

And so on.  The trouble comes when this approach to football runs its course.  What happens when both teams want it 100%?  What Roy Hodgson has done at Fulham is create a tactically sound framework on which to build an English football team.  So while our players do usually want it 100% (Jimmy Bullard sometimes wants it 110% but some people worried that Seol only wanted it about 30% when he was getting picked), we also have the knowledge that if our players do give their 100% we will probably not lose the match unless something odd happens.

Surely this ought to be worthy of considerable praise from the media. A few seasons ago we had just drawn 3-3 with Watford at Vicarage Road. At the time I had just read John Foot’s excellent “Calcio”, a book about Italian football that contained the purist’s suggestion that a perfect game of football must end 0-0, that being the only score possible if neither side makes a mistake.  Now, we can argue all we want that there is more to life than avoiding mistakes, but in a results business, having a team that doesn’t make mistakes is as good a way as any for a manager to keep his job. 

And here we were drawing 3-3 with Watford.  I forget the details, but all six goals were probably farcical.  At least two of ours came from goalmouth scrambles.  There was effort everywhere, skill probably, but it was not always obvious.  Such fare was by no means uncommon then. Chris Coleman had a terrific eye for a player but his tactical play seemed to have descended into nothingness, with match after match decided by whichever team took advantage of the chances it happened upon. 

From there we took a step down the evolutionary ladder and saw Lawrie Sanchez’s attempt to replicate Northern Ireland’s success with a league side.  He transplanted all available Northern Ireland players to Motspur Park, and was a bit unlucky with how things went, but try as I might I can’t remember anything remotely tactical about the way we played.  Certainly Danny Murphy and Steven Davis, the central midfielders at the time, never did seem to see the ball.  It was occasionally interesting to watch, but when the wheels came off they really came off, to the point that Shefki Kuqi became our attacking plan A and Dejan Stefanovic our defensive mainstay. 

Roy Hodgson took some time to sort the mess out.  In retrospect we should have expected this.  The man’s a coach above all else, his methods are drummed in through practice rather than through snappy one-liners and alchemic substitutions. He reasons that top golfers spend their time practising key elements over and over, top musicians do the same, so why shouldn’t top footballers spend their time on boring things like positioning if this is what is going to make a difference on the field?  So yes, it took time for this to bed in, and perhaps the surprise is that we got away with it and stayed up at the end of last season.  He really did have a lot of work to do.

But this year is a different story.  We started off shakily, but Hodgson’s tried and trusted methods have been reinforced rather than abandoned, the canny coach dogmatically sticking to principles that he knows will work in the medium term.  And they have.  Hodgson has some famous names in his first choice eleven, but the team is greater than the sum of its parts.   The media is now fixated on Jimmy Bullard and Brede Hangeland, but the team managed to hold Spurs without either (Bullard went off after 37 minutes; Hangeland had “the flu”).  Chris Baird, much troubled in his Fulham career to-date, came in for Hangeland and had a stormer.  That’s coaching. 

So why don’t we see Gary Lineker and Lee Dixon puzzling over this on Match of the Day?  Why isn’t the public interested in how a small team from West London is turning into one of the toughest opponents in the game?   Why isn’t it interested in how players like John Paintsil, Aaron Hughes, Paul Konchesky, Danny Murphy, Clint Dempsey, Simon Davies and Bobby Zamora are playing at such a high level? 

Because football is, I suppose, mainly about entertainment, and unless you’re unusually fascinated by the inner workings of how things work on a football pitch, you’re not going to be entertained by a team that has seemingly mastered the art of drawing 0-0.  Fair enough.  But surely there ought to be a sackful of managers who would love to know how to do this?  Surely there should be fans all over the country who would benefit from learning why it is that their team concedes lots of goals?   Roy Hodgson has put together a perfect case study in the art of coaching a solid defensive team, and it deserves more attention that it is getting.  This is not just about Brede Hangeland and Jimmy Bullard.

Champions of London

From The Times:

Games between London teams

1 Fulham P5 W2 D2 L1

2 Arsenal P4 W2 D1 L1

3 Spurs P5 W1 D3 L1

4 West Ham P4 W1 D1 L2

5 Chelsea P4 W0 D3 L1

All of which means little but is fun nevertheless.  And if we’d beaten West Ham (that defeat still grates) our home record would be perfect and we’d be even better in this table.

Fulham 2-2 Chelsea

A thrilling derby in which Clint Dempsey and Frank Lampard scored two goals each.

Fulham went ahead early on.  Simon Davies – restored to dead ball duties in Jimmy Bullard’s absence – bent in a wicked cross from the left flank which Dempsey flipped into the net from a yard out.  How the ball made its way so far without being cleared was something of a mystery, but without John Terry the Chelsea defence seemed half-vulnerable all day.  It was a typical piece of opportunism from Dempsey, and a fantastic start to the game.

Chelsea – who let’s remember, have an astonishing away record this year – responded aggressively, coming close on a number of occasions.  Didier Drogba was intensely physical and the whites were struggling to contain him.  Things got worse, Anelka being introduced for the injured Malouda.  Anelka’s first act was to smash a shot from distance that Mark Schwarzer *just* kept out, possibly with his elbow.  Perhaps the hardest hit shot we’ve seen at the Cottage this year.  Frank Lampard belted the ball goalwards but Schwarzer stopped that one too.   Chelsea had a series of corners, but could not find a way through.  Fulham – pegged back but remarkably assured – went in a goal up.

Then followed a whirlwhind of attacking football.  Local rivalry or not, sometimes you have to tip your hat; Chelsea were very good.  Their formation effectively became a 2-1-4-3, with two centre-backs protected by the impressive Mikel, Bosingwa and Cole flying down the wings, Lampard and Deco pulling strings from all over the place, and Anelka, Drogbda and Cole/Kalou making merry up front.  It was an absolute onslaught and it paid off straight away, Drogba breaking clear (a possible hand-ball?), turning the back infield, then…. a mixup?  The ball fell loose to Lampard who converted the open goal.

They didn’t stop there, and for a time Fulham were reduced to lamping long balls as far as they could to try to get a breather.  A harsh free-kick was awarded, Lampard stepped up, sent a piledriver through from distance, and bang! in it went.  Did it skip off the turf?  Take a deflection?  The Fulham players looked stunned.  The early goal was now a distant memory, and we hadn’t troubled Petr Cech since.  The fear was that we might be buried.

But Hodgson’s team are made of stern stuff, and straightaway the Whites pulled themselves together.  John Paintsil made a point of geeing up his colleagues, reminding them that this was far from over.  Good man, heads were sinking.  Simon Davies – who had a fine game at last – reasserted himself, Dempsey and Paintsil resumed their battle with Ashley Cole down the right, and we had a game on again.  Murphy attacked, got caught upfield, but who was covering for him?  Andy Johnson!  Smart play, selfless play.  We still needed a goal though.  Zamora made way for Nevland, Andreasen came on for Etuhu (who had a fair first start), and back we went.   Time running out, a corner on the right, that man Davies whips it in, and up, up goes Clint Dempsey.  The ball spins goalwards!  It’s in!  It’s bloody in!  Dempsey rips his shirt off in delight, sprinting towards the Hammy End.  When the euphoria dies down the referee, apologetically, shows him a yellow card.

Post script: under the Johnny Haynes Stand, Mens toilets.  An early leaver has returned, panicked:  “who scored?” he implores.  The Times’ legendary football writer Brian Glanville emerges from the toilet:  “Dempsey, header” he declares, firmly but with some pleasure.  “Dempsey, header” indeed.  What a day.

Spurs 0-0 Fulham

Boxing Day.  I had been feeling quite excited on the drive up, rolling around a Hilaire Belloc line in my mind (via Australian writer Gideon Haigh’s essay about Australian wicket keeper Adam Gilchrist): “Whatever happens, we have got/ Hangeland, and you have not”.  I liked this, but on arrival at White Hart Lane I realised that I was very wrong: we did not have Hangeland.  Panic.  I had just put £5 on a 0-0 draw, taking advantage of silly 9-1 odds.  (Had they not been paying attention?  Fulham 9-1 for a 0-0 away from home?)  I texted someone who might know: “Where’s Hangeland?” “Sold to Chelsea” “Not really, flu unfortunately” “! You evil man.”

Chris Baird stood in, which, if nothing else, would test the strength of Roy’s system:  if we could keep a clean sheet at Spurs without Brede Hangeland then we must surely be on the right track. Adding to the intrigue, Jimmy Bullard was injured in the first half, and replaced by Dickson Etuhu.  These two players – our best two players – are the subjects of much transfer speculation at the moment, so the remainder of the game would be a sneak preview of what life without them might be like.

It wasn’t too bad.  Chris Baird, Hangeland’s replacement, had something of a stormer, charging down what seemed like a dozen shots, making some important tackles, and only once caught being clumsy.  Well played, Chris Baird.  Aaron Hughes beside him had an equally combative afternoon, and the pair of them can be proud of a fine backs to the wall performance.

The middle of the park was more of an issue, as Bullard’s removal did leave a bit of a hole.  In some ways it worked to our advantage, as Etuhu’s heft was useful in repelling the second half onslaught, but if we’d managed to keep the ball for more than 20 seconds at a time (we didn’t) this onslaught may not have materialised in the first place.  The stage was set for Simon Davies to take charge in there, but alas, it was not really his day.  On the other flank Dempsey had a thunderous first half, testing Gomes with an acrobatic scissors kick, but he could not swim against the current in the second half; it really was tense stuff.

But as the minutes ticked on and the pressure mounted Fulham could – and perhaps should – have won the game. Andy Johnson was set free by Davies, but failed in his attempt to round Gomes, and the chance was lost.  (Johnson has been spurned three one-on-one chances in the last couple of games).  It was a difficult game for he and Zamora, but again they worked hard and battled for the team.  We must appreciate this, but we must also hope that both can be a bit deadlier in the new year.

There are no such issues at the back, where Mark Schwarzer made one of the saves of the season early on, flipping a close range shot from Aaron Lennon wide when a goal seemed almost certain.  He really is a player.  As is this season’s most unheralded defender, Paul Konchesky, who had a terrific game against the chainsaw pace of Lennon.  Lennon and Corluka were dynamic down the Spurs right, and Konchesky had to be at his best to keep them out.  One tackle, throwing himself at Lennon’s feet inside the penalty area, was massively difficult and even more dangerous, but perfectly executed.  Well done him, too.

And so a cold, cold game finished 0-0.  I collected £50 from the Mansion Bookmaker’s window, at once delighted to have won some money and disappointed not to have had the courage of my convictions and stuck the whole £10 down in the first place.  But that is greedy thinking, and I must be happy with my winnings, just as the team must be happy with their point.   At the moment it really does feel as if we could hold Brazil to a 0-0 draw at the Maracana if given the opportunity.  The absence of goals may not thrill our away supporters, but those points are mounting up.

Merry Christmas!

No idea when I’ll next be posting, so Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.    I’ll be at both the games over the festive period, so check back after those, otherwise no idea how much content you’ll see here over the next week or so.

Full review of the year in due course, but it’s been a good one hasn’t it?

I wonder when we’ll next feel like we did that day?  Amazing.

Cheers, all, and thanks for reading.  Double thanks to Brian, for co-piloting the site through tricky waters last season, to Jamie, for his outstanding match reports to keep us up to date, but also to everyone who has commented on the site and made a contribution – you’ve all been great.   Here’s to an excellent 2009.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Exquisite goal

You’ve probably all picked up on this, but I wanted to highlight a couple of things from our third goal on Saturday.

First, watch Andy Johnson.  In the top frame that’s him on the right.   His wonderfully angled run works on two levels:  it gives Murphy a great option for a through ball, but, and this was the key to the whole thing, it drags the defence right out of position.

We see as Murphy receives the ball Johnson points ahead and bursts forward into space.   At this point Murphy is poised to make the pass, but, and this was fantastic play too, he stops himself, checks, and rolls a perfect pass (and really it was a perfect pass) into Clint Dempsey’s path.   It was absolutely the right option.  As the second angle at the bottom shows, if he’d passed it to Johnson the latter would probably have been forced away from goal and closed down (that’s if the pass had got through the two defenders closing Murphy down).    Instead he served the ball on a plate to Dempsey, who finished well.

I didn’t realise how good a player Andy Johnson is.  He works, and we expected that, but his intelligence on the pitch is very impressive.   So thumbs up to him for an outstanding run, to Murphy for exploiting a situation incredibly well, and to Dempsey for finishing the job.   And probably to Roy for making it all happen.

Some tactics talk from the Guardian

Jonathan Wilson on 4-2-3-1 vs 4-4-2 (thanks to Brian for the heads up).  Fantastic article, in which he raises the point of modern players “sublimating themselves to the system”.

today’s celebrity players, who enjoy such freedom of movement under modern transfer regulations, would never sublimate themselves to a system as Sacchi demanded his players should. Even at Milan, for all his success, Saachi ended up falling out with Marco van Basten and Ruud Gullit.

Hmmm.  Roy’s a big system man…

And here’s Sid Lowe on why Barcelona are scoring so much.  This is less relevant to us because we don’t have and won’t have a team of intergallactic superstars, but interesting nevertheless.

Odds and ends

Roy on TV:

BBC video post match

Sky post match video (maybe a better interview)

He’s nice about Julio Arca’s tackle.   Real gent, is Roy.

Some comments:

(On Bullard)

This is not like a Michael Owen situation.  Jimmy has 18 months to go, the same as myself and 75 per cent of the squad.

Quite right.

Jimmy is doing a good job but a lot of players are doing a fantastic job in this team.   I and the rest of the players can feel a bit aggrieved that all the talk seems to be revolving around one man…  Danny Murphy has done a remarkable job in his quiet way. Jimmy has done his bit and I am the first to recognise and thank him for it but it is wrong to make this a one-man club.

Again, all true, and all worth saying.  Bullard did well, but Murphy was outstanding, Clint Dempsey had a stormer on the right, and Simon Davies was decent enough.  Zamora and Johnson were fantastic (they really are a very hard working pair) and the entire defence was again very, very good.    The media’s Bullard love-in is excellent for us if we want to drum up a sale, but otherwise an unwelcome distraction.

Incidentally, the latest FulTime magazine is great.  Andy Johnson speaks of how close he and Zamora are, and says how against Spurs Woodgate and King both said that they’d never had to run so much in a game.   Roy said something similar in his interviews, that Middlesbrough’s defenders will know they’ve had a game.    Zamora and Johnson are the squad’s unsung heroes at the moment, and I really do hope they grab the goals that their work deserves.

Here is Dickson Etuhu about to make his Fulham debut.  Congratulations, Dickson.

Clint Dempsey scored six goals in his centre-forward stint last year, a spell that lasted from August through to the end of December.   Nobody seemed too quick to give him any credit for this, despite his being used out of position in a bad team.   When we signed Johnson and Zamora I said that I’d be surprised if either matched Clint’s first half of the season haul, and now, with two games left in the year, it would appear that this guess will be proved correct.

Of course I’m not saying that Dempsey is a better forward than Johnson or Zamora – clearly this is not the case.  But I do hope that his recent run in the team has given people something to think about.   We have spent a lot of time praising him at CCN, probably to the point of annoying some readers, but when you look at his recent performances surely his value is now established.   A good argument could be made that without him we’d have been relegated in both of the last two seasons, and now here he is again, returning to the side at the start of a six match unbeaten run in which two goals have been conceded and ten points picked up.  No, that’s not all on Dempsey, but he’s done his bit.   That broad portfolio of skills is starting to turn into an array of genuinely useful talents, and he looks genuinely dangerous wide on the right now.   Long may it continue.

(Added to which, I’d be quite surprised if he hasn’t played more games for Fulham than anyone else in the current squad.)

Here he and Roy discuss yesterday’s game.

Fulham 3-0 Middlesbrough

A timely result on all sorts of levels, but most importantly, a convincing win reminded us that this team is not all about defending, creating stalemates and 0-0 draws, and that it can attack effectively.  It did so today, harrassing Middlesbrough to death, controlling the middle of the park with and without the ball, and scoring the goals to win at a canter.

Jimmy Bullard has dominated the press this week, and it was he who popped up in the area to ram home our first.  Dempsey on the right had crossed low for Zamora, whose shot on the turn had been saved but not held, and Bullard was alert and quick to the rebound.  He almost wet himself in happiness, dancing jigs of joy until Middlesbrough kicked off.  A big goal for the man, and for the team, whose early pressure had not resulted in anything tangible.  Paintsil had missed a glorious headed chance from a Konchesky corner, Johnson narrowly failed to score when clean through, and Simon Davies sent a curler whistling just wide of the far post.  We were attacking, and doing it well.

These games are always close though, and Boro’s impish wide players, Johson and Downing, always looked half threatening.  We would need a second goal, and, rather fortuitously, we got it early in the second half.  In our last two games Man City’s Richard Dunne and Stoke’s Danny Higginbotham have handled in the box against us but nothing has been given.  Today Anthony McMahon was harshly judged to have handballed in the act of clearing the ball.  Perhaps things do even themselves out after all.  Danny Murphy’s low spot kick was perfect and unsaveable, just inside the right hand post.

That man Murphy then made the third goal as the hour approached.  Finding himself in an unusually advanced position, Murphy spied Dempsey running into space in the area.  The pass was perfect, Dempsey had time to take two controlling touches, then rolled the ball past Turnbull in the Boro goal. 3-0, job done.

It was another good performance from the whites.  The back four did well, but we expect that now.  What differed today was the sheer menace the team showed in attack, with Johnson and Zamora in particular playing supremely well (individually and collectively).  Zamora is playing like Barcelona era Ronaldo (the Brazilian one) at times this season, but without the composure to make his good work count.  His buildup play is wonderful, his quick feet and eye for space are surprisingly good for a big man, and his overall play is extremely astute.  Sadly he is now too long without a goal, and this seems to be affecting him as he gets close, but the crowd stuck with him today, droning out his name for what seemed like the whole of the second half.   He and Johnson are not just good players, they’re first class workers and team players, which endears them to the crowd no end.  Johnson himself might have had a hat-trick today, but when the team bangs in three besides, there’s no sense complaining about what might have been.  These two were ably supported by the determined Dempsey and the spritely Bullard, with Davies and Murphy quietly doing a fine job as well in keeping the ball for long periods of time and passing Middlesborough out of contention.  Our manager has built a good, varied, and occasionally very interesting team.

If, if, if, if, if

Says Roy (audio clip on BBC).

A long ramble on the Jimmy Bullard situation

Roy’s pre match video

Key info: Zamora’s only trained one day this week, so may not start.

Then the real fun:

JIMMY BULLARD TOLD HE CAN LEAVE FULHAM (my caps for excitement value)

Sky Sports News sources understand Jimmy Bullard has been told he can leave Fulham in the January transfer window.

Then Roy explains all.  As ever, he makes fair points, but points that sound like a manager who is not rushing to put out a metaphorical media fire.

“We’re still waiting to see what happens because he [Bullard] has his own ambitions. I’m not a party to those discussions when Jimmy sits down with this agent and Alistair Mackintosh [Fulham Chief Executive].

“He hasn’t been told he can leave in January. We’re not trying to get rid of Jimmy Bullard, but Jimmy Bullard is trying to get a contract which suits him. He’s not sure that we can provide that contract and, as a result, we must be realistic and there might be other clubs out there who can offer him that, and can pay the transfer fee we think he’s worth. If that happens, it happens.

“Certainly Jimmy’s wage demands and where he sees himself are at a very high level and it’s not certain that Fulham Football Club will be the Club that can match that. With the January transfer window coming up, we cannot rule out that if the Club at the moment is not satisfying him, telling him the things he really wants to hear, there might be other clubs coming in and attempting to sign him – that’s a situation that I think a lot of football clubs are going to find themselves in this transfer window.

“At the end of the day it’s the Chairman’s Club. Alistair Mackintosh and I will say what we think on the football front and we’ll certainly have plenty of advice to give about any potential deal that comes our way and I’m sure that the Chairman will listen. It will be his decision because he’s the one who pays the money, it’s his Club.

“If an offer came in which he and the Club finds very, very attractive then it wouldn’t be very easy for me to say ‘no, I don’t want it.’ It’s not quite as simple as that, I don’t think it’s like that at any football club. Every decision that is made at this high level has to be made for the good of the Club. You can’t make decisions for the good of the Club without involving the owner who puts in all the money. We wouldn’t be sitting here today with his support.”

Bullard wants a new contract, and his agent has seemingly used all kinds of tricks to get him one.  In the summer this meant touting the player to teams like Bolton, Wigan, Everton and West Ham, all of whom were interested.  Bullard, we are repeatedly told, likes life at Fulham, and does not want to leave.   So the shopping around thing was almost certainly a negotiating ploy.   The club stood its ground then, and rightly so.  Bullard’s been great for Fulham, but has played about a season’s worth of games for us, and certainly does not necessarily ‘deserve’ any special treatment at this point.

Negotiations have perhaps tilted in Bullard’s favour since he got his England call up.   Good job for him that he did really, as his form at the time was not great.   But anyway, Bullard is now the nation’s favourite ‘character’, touted as being ‘underrated’ to the extent that he is now probably overrated by the media.  Everyone loves him.   He has the England squad, the profile, but not, alas, the big money contract.  And now he wants it.

So Roy Hodgson, very reasonably, says that if he wants silly money he’s going to have to find a club prepared to give him this, because unless MAF decides to resolve this long-running situation with a surprise handout, it ain’t going to end well.

It’s worth considering that Harrod’s is unlikely to be performing especially well at the moment.  While MAF’s financial clout may be built on the booty of many adventures, Harrod’s is his thing, his front, his empire.  With retail suffering and wallets being kept in bags, he may wish to be careful until the economy improves.  True, we have TV money, but equally we’re already deeply in debt to our man, and the interest free loans can’t go on indefinitely.    So we may lose players if we get good offers.

The question, then, is can we afford to lose Jimmy Bullard?

The answer, I think, is yes.    Jimmy Bullard currently does everything in the Fulham midfield, possibly to the detriment of the equally able Simon Davies.    What, I wonder, does Bullard do that Davies could not?   Davies passes as well as Bullard, his shooting, though hardly seen this year, is decent, his crossing better.   Tackling is a non-issue for both, as neither get involved with this side of things.   Lose Bullard and you have the following options:

A – Let Simon Davies run the midfield
B – Let Zoltan Gera come infield
C – Involve Leon Andreasen again
D – Let Clint Dempsey loose in the middle
E – Something else

I’d be happy with A, which I believe would be a fairly seamless transition.   Gera would worry me, he seems to lack presence in the middle of the park, but I could well be wrong.   I think Leon Andreasen could do a job in the middle.  We’d lose the accuracy of Bullard’s passing, but Andreasen is a better tackler, has goals in him, and can contribute aerially.   I’d love to see Dempsey given a run in the middle, not least because this role would suit his jack of all trades master of none style well.  Something else?  Well, we’ll see.    But losing Bullard doesn’t exactly devastate us does it?

I’m not forgetting what he did last year.   When the chips were down – and they were down, very down – Bullard came in and pinged a couple of very important free kicks into the net, brought some dynamism to a choking side, and generally lifted things.   That’s great; none of us will forget this.  But do we need him now?  Can we do without him?  Yes.  Yes we can.

One problem is that any sale would probably net the club £5 million tops.   Looking for a replacement at that price is not easy.   An England player – and that’s what Bullard is being talked of as, so we might as well roll with it – is worth silly money.  A young England player in the middle of the park is worth £18 million:  Carrick, Hargreaves, Barry.   Bullard’s age and health and ability knock money off that, but he is rightly a valuable player, and should command a price that reflects this.    Against this, he only has 18 months on his existing contract remaining, and he may opt to run this down and leave the club with nothing.

Do we need the money from the sale?  Not really, especially as Bullard’s presence will help us to stay in the division, the rewards for which dwarf any transfer fee we might receive.   So why sell?

Hodgson’s answer seems to be along the lines of “the player wants this (contract), he can’t get it here, so he has to go elsewhere for the money he feels he needs”.    It’s difficult though, isn’t it?  We (probably) really don’t need the money, we don’t owe Jimmy Bullard anything (he kept us up, we helped him stay in the game), so again, why sell?

This I can’t answer.  I don’t think we need to keep him, and I don’t think we need to sell him.   True, his value will never be higher, but that value, however inflated, will still not be life-changing money.   If we were talking about £12 million I’d say yes, go for it, but £4-5 million?   That’s a journeyman midfielder.   Which Bullard may very well be, but his reputation outstrips that now, his value to the club is more than that too.    Rightly or wrongly, he is idolised by the fans, presumably rated by his colleagues; what does selling him achieve?

If MAF wants the money, if Bullard’s making himself a nuisance over this, if Hodgson doesn’t rate him, then fine, sell.  But I don’t know that any of the above apply.  So we find ourselves faced with shipping out a decent (if overrated) player because he wants more money.  That doesn’t suit the club, I don’t think.   The club’s best interests are not served by suddenly reconfiguring a central midfield pairing in January.   If Bullard is to leave, let it happen in July.

Playerform Half Term report

playerform-half-term-report

This is pretty interesting – Playerform have rated all the teams in the league.  Click on the above for the Word Doc.

Some highlights:

Fulham:

Star Pupils:  Hangeland, Schwarzer
Gold Stars: Murphy, Dempsey
Pull your socks up: Gera, Bullard

Which is perhaps harsh but at least gets beyond mainstream perceptions.

Some other highlights:

Birmingham Gold Star for Franck Queudrue
Cardiff City Star Pupil Wayne Routledge
Charlton Athletic Pull Your Socks Up Hameur Bouazza and Nicky Bailey
Watford Gold Star for Jon Harley
Sunderland Star Pupil Steed Malbranque
Hereford Pull Your Socks Up Bradley Hudson-Odoi
Peterborough Star Pupil Gabriel Zakuani

Some targets:

Cardiff City Pull Your Socks Up Joe Ledley
Southampton Star Pupils Adam Lallana and Andrew Surman (we’ve been linked with both)

Cheap Laughs from League Two:

Luton Gold Star for Michael Spillane

Pessimism today

Something else to chew on.

Regular readers will know that I’m a big believer in the predictive power of goal difference.  Simply put, if a team’s goal difference is out of kilter with its league position it probably won’t stay in that league position for long.

I broke Goal Difference down a bit further, ranked teams for Goals For and Goals Against, and averaged the two.  So if a team is 19th for goals scored and 4th for goals against it ought to be about 11th or 12th.  We’re actually 10th, which is near enough.

Nothing too dramatic, but I think it does give an indication of the teams we might expect to do better, and which are in a false position.   And looking at this it seems reasonable clear that Stoke ought to be a bit lower, but that almost all of the teams in the buffer zone underneath us can be expected to improve (dramatically in some cases).   When that happens Wigan, Bolton, ourselves and Middlesbrough suddenly find ourselves in bother, which is possibly what a lot of people would have expected from the outset anyway.

Against that, not all of the ‘underachieving’ clubs will improve, and Blackburn may not correct themselves.  But I think this shows that we have absolutely no business getting comfortable yet.  Also we have a terrible run-in.  So points are needed while the going’s still quite good, or Fulham could easily be that ’suprise’ team in bother in April and May.

The longest day

Tooting Broadway to London Bridge, London Bridge to Canning Town, Canning Town to City Airport.

City Airport to Canning Town, Canning Town to London Bridge, London Bridge to Gatwick Airport.

Gatwick Airport to Edinburgh Airport.

Edinburgh Airport to a building somewhere in Edinburgh.

A building somewhere in Edinburgh to Edinburgh Airport.

Edinburgh Airport to London City Airport.

London City Airport to Canning Town.  Canning Town to London Bridge.  London Bridge to Tooting Broadway.

And here I am.  Fog meant that this morning’s flight was cancelled, so we tried a different airport.  Fog delayed takeoff here, so we arrived at our 2pm presentation at 3pm.  I was leading this part, jumped – tie askew – into a room of people, and found that the small room of 5-6 people I had expected was in fact a lecture theatre of 30-40 people.   I didn’t have time to get out my notes, so blathered on for an hour, then we came home.

I am exhausted.

The only football thing I learned came in Gatwick’s BA Business Lounge (we got bumped up following the cancellation).  Here I read a free copy of FIFA (TM) Magazine (TM)(TM).  There was an interview with Fabio Capello in it, and he said that he sees football as being all about a 9-1 formation these days, and that the game is almost being reduced to having a great goalkeeper and a great forward, with everyone else really being moveable defenders.  I don’t think he meant that, but it’s interesting in that it makes one think.  I ought to dig out the exact quote:

Every team, no matter what formation the use, actually have a system I call the “9-1″ formation.  By that I mean that nine players primarily have defensive duties, and up front there is one lone striker who is supporters by his team mates rushing to join him in attack.  The crucial difference often lies in the quality of the goalkeeper and the striker, with Spain’s Casillas and Torres and Italy’s Buffon and Toni are fine examples.

Intriguing.  I can see where he’s coming from, and you can very easily see how our current team plus Fernando Torres would win an awful lot of football matches.  Yes, he’d help a lot of teams, but I honestly think that a player like that, allied to our now proven solidity, could be seriously dangerous.  He’d make more difference to Fulham than he would to any other team, perhaps.  Never happen, of course, but this is what Capello’s on about I’m sure.

In the same way, I read today that Michael Owen has scored seven goals from 16 shots this season.  Our Bob has one in 27.  Andy Johnson has four in 18.  Now that’s not a fair comparison, but it does show the difference you might get with a premium player.   Again, we couldn’t sign Michael Owen even if we had the money, but star players, it seems to me, almost always seem to to be surprisingly decent value.

Then he said, about something else:  “In Italy it is all about tactics and playing for a result..”

Roy’s an Italian coach in all but nationality, isn’t he?

News roundup

Hangeland makes all the right noises:

“It has gone well for me, personally.” Hangeland said.

“I am pleased with how I have progressed since I came here. It feels like I am on top of my career right now.

“I see myself at Fulham for many years. The club is the right size and has a perfect location in South West London.

“That allows us to live in a family-friendly and quiet area which is close to both the stadium and training.

“That means a tremendous amount to me.”

Roy in the Daily Mail

“Our defence is getting stronger with every game, but we also have Mark, who is a dominant character and gives the defenders confidence. When balls are thrown high and wildly into our penalty box they know he is going to come and get them.”

Hodgson’s biggest problem is in attack where Andy Johnson struggled on Saturday in the absence of Bobby Zamora. He added: “It’s frustrating to play as well as we did and not quite deliver that cross or final pass.

“I think it is one defeat in 10 now – and that was an 88th-minute goal at Everton. That is an excellent record and we have got to be very proud of it and keep building on it.

“We work hard to get into the positions, the movement and passing is excellent, now we need that final touch to kill teams off.”

Roy in the Express.  Nice comment about balls and people flying around Hangeland!

“I’ve not been told by the chairman that I’ve got to sell our best players and I would be very resistant to letting anybody go,” said Hodgson. “With the credit crunch I’m not sure there will be that much money around for the bulk of clubs anyway.

“There will always be some with money, but for most of us it might be a case of battening down the hatches and getting on with it. But I am realistic. If you have people like Hangeland and Bullard and big clubs come knocking on your door it’s not always that easy to say no.

“Every player has a price, but I’d like to keep this team together because I think we can stay in this league with a little bit less trauma than we had last year.”

“Everyone’s talking about Brede. I knew he was a good player and had the capacity to develop when I signed him,” said Hodgson.

“He found it quite hard at the start because people and balls were flying around him but now he’s used to that. We love him at Fulham and I’m hoping he is one of those guys who is satisfied playing in what in my opinion is quite a good team.”

Steve Claridge wants to ban John Paintsil.  Well, maybe.  I listened to Claridge on Radio 5 on the way home yesterday, and he spoke a surprising amount of sense.  He was doing Portsmouth Newcastle and had a few interesting tactical observations (which the main commentator was not remotely interested in, so they died on the vine).   But here he shows his Talk Sport side.   Sure, John didn’t cover himself in glory, but let’s not over-react.   Interesting to see Alan Shearer on Match of the Day on Saturday saying, effectively, that yes, Wayne Rooney was guilty of stamping on an Aalberg player in the week, but hopefully he wouldn’t get punished.  Righto.   Match of the Day has stopped it’s excessive mateyness, but without Martin O’Neill the program is completely reliant on Lee Dixon for brains, and he can only do so much.

We’re linked with Southampton’s Andrew Surman.   Not sure about him.  Seen him a couple of times, and looks tidy enough but my impression was that he’s not that different to what we already have.

Roy’s interview and transfer rumours again

Roy’s post match interview.  Very fair minded, but I do wonder if he really thinks that we’re on the right track in terms of making chances, or whether he cares if we’re not.   A 0-0 draw in every away game would do nicely, after all.   But two away goals all season is quite poor, and while we have limited opponents’ goals as well, as Jamie says below, we surely could back ourselves to outscore Stoke in a slightly more open game.

Perhaps we should be happy: seeing 21 points on the board already is quite nice, and – as other teams are showing – it is very easy for teams to not get points.   Maybe we should be grateful for what we have.   Roy is a poker player playing a very tight game; it may not be exciting, but he still has his original stack of chips, while the more reckless players at the table are going broke.

However, storm clouds are on the horizon:

Fulham are going head to head with QPR to land Crystal Palace midfielder Ben Watson for £500,000, meanwhile the club have said it is quite possible that Jimmy Bullard will not be with them after the window.

Roy Hodgson has been given £5 million to spend in January by club chairman Mohammed Al Fayed.

Lee Cook looks set to complete his £850,000 move to QPR in January.

Brede Hangeland is said to be delaying contract talks because both Tottenham and Arsenal are showing interest in the centre-half.

Rotherham have extended the loan of Fulham goalkeeper David Stockdale until January 17.

Aaargh!  I don’t worry too much about the Bullard thing – we have other players who can do what he does and frankly the bloke infuriates me – but Hangeland is a big concern.  I’m sure that the dropoff between him and Kallio wouldn’t be as bad as some might think, but any dropoff is a bad thing when games are as tight as ours.   At this point he’s good enough for Arsenal, Spurs or Liverpool, I suppose it just remains to be seen when they buy him.  You’d like to think that we’d be able to stall them until the summer, but this may not be possible.   Wenger needs to sort out his team; Liverpool still trot Hyppia out there, and Redknapp was hugely impressed by Hangeland’s performance against his new club (that and he has injury trouble at centre-half).   Worrying.

Jamie’s report: Stoke 0-0 Fulham

So, then: another away day, another point picked up and another game in which the prospect of a goal for either team barely reached the realm of remote possibility. It’s difficult to know what to say about this game without sounding repetitious. As at Anfield and Villa Park, we played a version of the ‘passing game’ which killed the contest completely – our ponderous and cautious use of the ball meaning the game never became stretched and both teams were invariably well set enough to snuff out the other’s attacks with ease.

Jimmy Bullard in particular seemed to want three or four touches every time he received possession – usually one yard away from one of our defenders, whom he liked to pass it straight back to, and often whilst Johnson or Dempsey would be making enterprising runs into space up front. By the time our midfield did work the ball towards them, the space had long gone. For all our possession, we failed to create a single chance of note – two decent but optimistic long-range efforts from Davies and Dempsey being the closest we came. Stoke had the one real opening when, on the half hour, Cresswell curled a shot over having been slipped through by the impressive Fuller.

As for the infamous throw-ins, Stoke’s first came on about ten minutes. Forward went the big defenders as the crowd chanted ‘Rory’s gonna get you…’ and the boy Delap prepared to launch his missile. As the Fulham fans held their breath, he took his run up and promptly spilled the ball a matter of yards in front of him – the most delightful of anti-climaxes. His shoulder injury was aggravated and it was left to Sonko to take over chucking duties for the rest of the game, against which Schwarzer and our defence coped admirably. Brede Hangleland was again an absolute class apart throughout – by far our man of the match.

In the second half, there was a period when the game threatened to be overshadowed by the performance of the referee – the already infamous and unfortunately pretty incompetent Stuart Atwell. He could easily have awarded us a penalty twice in the first half, but had soon exasperated both sets of supporters with a succession of bizarre decision, to the point where ‘You’re not fit to referee’ was sung in unison by home and away sections alike.

With the atmosphere increasingly restless, there was suddenly a flashpoint between Paintsil and Fuller, the former falling to the ground theatrically after their heads came together. Atwell simply did not know what to do – neither punishing Stoke’s player for a head-butt or ours for ‘simulation’, but the home fans had their own opinion and Paintsil inevitably had his every touch booed thereafter. His reaction? To revel in the attention, demanding possession and twisting and feinting to ridiculous excess whenever he received it. Soon, we won a throw in on the right hand side and were treated to the wonderful sight of our hero nonchalantly (and with no little skill) juggling the ball along the touchline as, just yards from him, thousands of fans screamed torrents of abuse. Brilliant stuff.

But that was as entertaining as it got. As a collective, the team now seem to be stuck in something of a rut. The passing ethic is in principle a good one but it relies on the occasional risk being taken – an attempt to beat a man, a difficult first-time pass being tried – and at the moment our play is far too conservative to really threaten our opponent’s goal. Against Stoke, there was no reason to be cautious – if we’d opened the game up slightly I’d have backed our players to score more goals than theirs. It seems a shame that the management and players don’t have the confidence or ambition to ‘go for it’ a little more – perhaps that will come. In the meantime, watching Fulham away can be pretty dull and frustrating stuff.

Stoke v Fulham open thread

Right, off out until Sunday pm.  Feel free to chat away below, gather match reports, write match reports if you went…