Olivier Dacourt?

France Football has the dish.   France Football is a serious paper, incidentally.  Twice a week it comes out.  I would love something similar over here, but this country’s need for lowest common denominator tittle-tattle means that a serious football paper is probably impossible.  However:

Le milieu défensif de l’Inter Milan, Olivier Dacourt, qui n’entre plus dans les plans de José Mourinho et sous contrat avec le club milanais jusqu’au mois de juin prochain, devrait être prêté au club londonien de Fulham jusqu’à la fin de la saison, annonce L’Equipe.fr.

Which roughly means:  the Inter Milan defensive midfielder Olivier Dacourt, who will no longer be in Jose Mourinho’s plans and who is under contract with the Milanese clubd until next June, is getting close (?) to London club Fulham until the end of the season.   The end bit’s not right, but the gist seems clear.  Hmmm.

Roy on the BBC

Good man.

Praises character and professionalism of the squad, people not wanting individual glory (wonder if that’s aimed at anyone?), praises Nevland’s attitude, but also others’, notes Clint’s 65 yard recovery run at the end to track Pennant.

Probably no more transfers but hopes for a couple of loans.

Dickson’s passing

That’ll do…

Fulham 3-1 Portsmouth

A canny victory. Portsmouth enjoyed much of the possession and a lot of the territory, but they did not break through until it was far too late. In the meantime Fulham struck with three incisive breaks and secured all the points. Harsh on Tony Adams’ team, but life is hard and there are no prizes in this league for effort, especially when you leave massive holes in the middle of your defence.

The Fulham midfield shone today. A year ago Portsmouth came to the Cottage and steamrollered us in the middle of the park. Today we gave as good as we got. The heretofore maligned Dickson Etuhu misplaced but a single pass all game; before and after that he was smooth and immaculate in possession, and also made some telling interventions in defence. Ahead of Etuhu, Danny Murphy, Simon Davies and Clint Dempsey played with strength, discipline and some flair. Who needs Jimmy Bullard?

Not us. Dempsey set Andy Johnson free early on with a simple through ball between the Portsmouth defenders. Johnson raced clear and passed the ball into the net to give the Whites a reassuring early lead. Portsmouth fought back and hit the bar with a header, but otherwise Mark Schwarzer was largely untroubled.

The second half saw much of the same, with Portsmouth playing like a 15 year old boy plotting the disrobement of his new girlfriend. In his mind he’s on the verge of something very exciting; in reality, he’s miles away.

Fulham were in control. The only downside was a poor performance from Bobby Zamora. Our number 9 has been short of goals for some time, but his all-round play has been generally excellent. But today he couldn’t get into the game and as time wore on his head seemed to go and his play degenerated beyond repair. Erik Nevland replaced him on the hour and scored twice. Zamora must have been mentally kicking his cat.

So a fine, comfortable win that suggests all is broadly well.   Which is more than can be said for Portsmouth, who, despite possessing a team full of good players, look like they’re in serious trouble.

Video!

James Bullard on feeling unwanted.  The pertinent words “I WASN’T WILLING TO PLAY WITH 16 MONTHS LEFT ON MY CONTRACT”.  Well *!&% you then.  Harsh?  Possibly, but it seems that the strike rumours were right after all.

Roy on transfer dealings. Andreasen off, Huddlestone not coming, Giles Barnes maybe.

Barnes is a fantastic idea. Two or three years ago Barnes was one of the game’s top prospects. Arsenal were linked with him, Spurs too. He had serious talent and was tipped for great things. As best I recall a combination of a slightly big-time attitude, bad injuries and Derby having trouble have derailed his progress, but there’s serious talent there. Best case scenario could be frighteningly good, but who knows how it’ll pan out?

Roy also wants another forward and another midfielder, while Leon Andreasen is off, as suggested earlier.

Interesting aside: I poked my head over the training ground fence this morning and saw Dickson Etuhu looking very comfortable on the ball in a small-side match. This was really only a couple of minutes but reminded me that over four days of training the coaching staff see a lot more of a player than we do in 90 minutes of match action.

Slings and arrows

Sorry for yesterday’s absence.  I turned 33 and spent the evening elsewhere.

Back now though.  Some things to think about.

First, at the risk of opening up old wounds,  the Bullard effect.

Danny Murphy with Bullard averaged 51 passes a game, and 40 of them were going to Fulham players.

Danny Murphy post Bullard is averaging 62 passes a game and hitting with 45 of them.

That’s a drop from 80% to 73%, or a fall from among the best in the league to fairly run of the mill.

Against that, three of the four games post-Bullard have been away.  But the ratios hold for Bullard away games, so this is probably not a factor.

So far then, Danny’s getting the ball more and is being a bit less accurate with it.

Which fits with the theory that he’s now lost a target, i.e. has fewer options when he gets the ball in the crowded midfield area.  A bad thing.

Here’s Danny and Dickson’s chalkboard at Sunderland:

Neither of them are passing forwards much, although Murphy was trying.   This is partly about options (I don’t know that our forwards and midfielders are playing close enough together, or that our wide players are attacking enough) and partly about the players themselves.  Look at our friend Bullard in his brief Hull debut:

Not a man who is being constrained.  Now, this is, we think, what Hodgson didn’t like about Bullard, but the man certainly makes himself available, and, let’s face it, he must be quite hard to mark.   Him running around like an idiot isn’t ideal defensively, but we were defending well while he was doing this, so we’ve effectively just lost his attacking output and not really gained much defensively.  That’s how it seems anyway.  Hmmm.

Help may be on the horizon though.  Today we learn that Tom Huddlestone of Tottenham and Fabian Delph of Leeds are both Fulham targets.  Both are midfielders who like the football, which is frankly what we need.  Neither is Luka Modric, but we’d only waste him if we had him anyway so perhaps that’s no bad thing.  We shall see, but with Leon Andreasen seemingly on his way (cheers, Yeboah) we are relying on Andranik being better than we thought or someone new stepping in.

Sunderland 1-0 Fulham

[bloody hell, sorry, Jamie wrote this - forgot to attribute it to him.... (he didn't point this out, I've just noticed myself)]

Depressing stuff up north, as usual. Fulham, set up to achieve another 0-0, could not take advantage of a sleepy Sunderland side in the first half and had no real plan B after going a goal behind in the second. So, the match eventually petered out and our opponents achieved victory without seeming to do much at all – surely their easiest three points of the season.

Kenwyne Jones’ goal came shortly after half time. Steed Malbranque, who was excellent, reminded us of his incredible low centre of gravity in shrugging off a Danny Murphy challenge to drive at the centre of our defence. A half-tackle came in, but the ball only ricocheted to Andy Reid, who curled a shot goalwards. Schwarzer saved, but only into the path of Jones, who gratefully tapped in. Perhaps Murphy was too weak in the tackle, perhaps Schwarzer could have aimed his parry further from danger – but in truth these things happen. It only demonstrates why having barely any ambition to score is such a dangerous game to play.

In the first half it seemed to look as if we might break the shackles. We were the better side, defending confidently and passing crisply – but, as has often been the case, half-time arrived with the realisation that we hadn’t created a single clear-cut chance. In fact, the two best opportunities had fallen to Sunderland – Cisse shooting just wide and Jones having a shot well saved when he really should have scored – both when they pounced on errors in our midfield by directly attacking. In the end, our only real ‘miss’ was by Davies, who should have done better from five yards after Dempsey had headed across goal. Steed Malbranque missed a similarly gilt-edged opportunity late on, when again Mark Schwarzer came to our rescue.

One can only feel for Johnson and Zamora who are completely starved of service. Both looked bright to begin with but gradually faded, perhaps resigned to the inevitability of another fruitless evening’s work. The recently departed Bullard would not have made a difference but his replacement Etuhu did himself no favours, giving the ball away recklessly on a number of occasions. Indeed, perhaps the most alarming part of Roy Hodgson’s satisfied post-match interview was his description of Etuhu’s performance as ‘excellent’.

On the plus side, John Paintsil was back to his best: beaten once on the wing by Reid but otherwise sound in defence and our only source of any width in attack – at one point bursting into Sunderland’s box having chested down a diagonal ball (only to shoot wastefully over). And in general our defence was good, especially the imperious Hangeland. But this isn’t enough, surely. Roy’s cautious approach cannot be said to be working since our away record – five points out of a possible thirty-three – is undeniably appalling. Depressingly, as long as our home form continues to keep us afloat, it’s difficult to see anything changing for the rest of the season. But is ‘afloat’ really all we aspire to be?

Fitter, happier, more productive

Very very interesting article from Jonathan Wilson today.   Where have all the goal poachers gone?

Gary Lineker had quite an interesting column in The Times at the weekend.

I wouldn’t make a great manager, which is why I haven’t tried, but it’s not as though I have nothing to contribute. I could definitely help strikers. I don’t think it is that difficult to work out how to score goals but, looking around, I am not sure how many of them really think about it or how much they care.

Take Jermain Defoe. He’s got a lot going for him — he’s sharp, quick, scores great goals. But some help with his movement could get him another ten a season.

I would go through the timing of runs and the need to gamble. I watch most strikers and they react, like defenders, to where the ball is going. You’ve got to guess, to go even if nine times out of ten the ball never reaches you.

That’s damn hard work and I’m not sure people ever gave me much credit. They’d say: “Oh, right place, right time”, but what they didn’t realise is that you’d been making that run all day, making sure you were in the right place all the time, gambling so that you were half a yard ahead of the defender. It’s not rocket science, but only a few seem to understand.

I think he’s right about not getting enough credit for all his tap-ins.  If it was that easy to score goals more people would get them.  But I don’t know, and Jonathan Wilson doesn’t know, if those extra ten goals a year he’s on about are there to be taken in this day and age.   Martin and I were discussing this over email today, and he rightly pointed out that a large proportion of goals these days a) come from outside the box and b) come from attacking midfielders.  The goal poacher is rare.   I can think of Tim Cahill – not even a forward – and Michael Owen and Kevin Phillips, then maybe Doyle at Reading… Man Utd sold van Nistelrooy… Benni McCarthy perhaps?   Clint Dempsey could be our version of Cahill, and Johnson has six yard box instincts, but he’s not going to be prolific without service is he?

The great USS Mariner website has been thinking about journalism in the modern world (Seattle’s local papers are dying – somebody is having their revenge, no?).  One of their commenters talked about three journalistic spheres:  the sphere of consensus, the sphere of legitimate debate, and the sphere of deviancy.

What are the remaining talking points at Fulham:

Consensus:  we are defending very well; Mark Schwarzer is good; better to have kept Hangeland than Bullard; Danny Murphy is a lot more valuable than many people had thought; Clint Dempsey is in the side to stay; Simon Davies has been out of form; Andy Johnson has been about what we expected; Bobby Zamora has played well but needs to score some goals.

Legitimate debate:  is John Paintsil wobbling?  What will happen with our midfield?  Can we carry on with Zamora and Johnson indefinitely?  Is our squad now big enough and deep enough?

Deviancy (the realm of nutbars and antisocial people who must be shunned, as I recall):  people saying Dickson Etuhu is useless (he isn’t useless, he just isn’t going to be Patrick Viera).  I can’t think of any others at the moment.

It’s the legitimate debate that journalists must focus on.  And therefore so should we.  So:

Is John Paintsil wobbling?  I don’t think so, and either way, he has earned the right to prove it either way.  It’s easy to overlook just how good our defence was in the first half of the season, and Paintsil was important in that.

What will happen with our midfield?  Zoltan Gera visibly started to try hard at the weekend.  This might not mean much, but there was a clear “fuck it” moment where he started to hare it around.   Nothing much came of it but I’m prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.  Everyone thinks there’s a player in there; we must hope he emerges soon.   Leon Andreasen wanted to leave but with Bullard going and Etuhu struggling perhaps now there is light at the end of the tunnel.   He hasn’t impressed me much this season, but again, there’s a good player in there and I want him to get a run of games.   I also believe that Simon Davies will play better post-Bullard.   He looked very good at times on Saturday.  A midfield of Dempsey-Murphy-Andreasen-Davies, with Gera getting plenty of minutes, ought to be good enough for now.

Can we carry on with Zamora and Johnson indefinitely?  The hardest question to answer.  I think so, although Zamora needs goals.   He has barely been shooting in recent weeks, and that needs to change.   Hopefully the midfield can make chances for him, and he’ll stick some away.   I think he’s good enough, and he and Johnson clearly work well together, so we must (remain) patient.

Is our squad now big enough and deep enough?   We need another forward, a left-sided midfielder, and possibly another centre-half.  None of these is vital though, so it’s very much a case of ‘find the right player’ rather than ‘find a player’.

In short, things are probably alright as they are.

Finally, a Ben Wright picture, from here:

He has, by all accounts, been absolutely amazing in the non-league game.   I look forward to seeing how this translates to the Premiership.

Swansea away

Yuck.  They’re a good side.  We’re travelling to another country.  It’s a tricky draw.

Kettering 2-4 Fulham

Alan Hansen is always saying that great teams find a way to win games even when they are playing badly.

He he.

Today’s extraordinary cup tie was a wonderful game of football, at once exciting, mortifying, and satisfying.  Fulham started very well.  Kettering couldn’t get out of their own half, Fulham would attach again, over and over.  We scored when Simon Davies volleyed home a Dempsey cross, a fantastic technical strike that sent the waist high ball fizzing into the net.  I began to daydream of scoring six or seven.

Somehow it was all too easy.  Kettering weren’t at the races, Fulham kept the ball, switched flanks to exploit space, and kept on attacking.  The Kettering keeper saved well from a Dempsey header that would have made it two.  But surely another goal was not far away.

Indeed it wasn’t.  Kettering attacked and a combination of a clumsy tackle and Old Mother Riley’s idiosyncratic refereeing resulted in a free-kick on the edge of our box.  The Kettering player took an almighty whack at the ball, which flicked off Zoltan Gera and left Schwarzer unmoved.

1-1.  Non-league side, remember?

It got worse.  In the second half Kettering had a free-header on the six yard box that was sent into the crowd.  Bloody hell.  We didn’t look like scoring.  The free flowing football of the first half was gone.  Now there was a gigantic hole in the middle of our team as Gera, Andreasen and Etuhu failed to stamp their authority on our now thriving opponents.  Gera got a bit between his teeth after this, but it merely resulted in him running around faster, not in anything tangibly good happening.

Finally Roy Hodgson brough on Danny Murphy, and at once things were under control.  Murphy calmed things down, Davies became a constant menace, and before long the pair of them had made a goal, from Davies to Murphy to the net, via a deflection.  Harsh on Kettering.  It felt wrong to cheer somehow; we bloody well should have been winning.

Kettering didn’t lie down, and soon Mike Riley got himself an equaliser, awarding a penalty for not much at all.  This was converted to make it 2-2.  The small crowd erupted, the Fulham fans rolled their eyes.  What on earth was going on?

Then we scored again.  A deep cross seemed to freeze everyone but Bobby Zamora, who nodded it back across goal for Andy Johnson to convert from a yard out.  Weird goal, but this was not a normal game, and here we were 3-2 up.  We fully expected some kind of Kettering response, but Zamora added a fourth with a sublime turn and shot that settled the matter and hopefully gave him some confidence for the weeks ahead.  Dempsey almost added a fifth with a crashing drive, and that was that.

Phew.

The Kettering goal in the second half.  Not the busiest place…

Zoltan scents opportunities… but fouls his man

Kettering on the attack

Here come the mighty whites

Up for the Cup

The game opens up (as captured by my phone’s Night Vision feature)

More Night Vision thrills

Yep.

Away we go

We are the lucky benefactors of a very good deed, so Kettering here we come!

Back later, but in the meantime With A Plum has surfaced again and asked some pertinent questions.

Here, here and here.   Always a good read.

Colin ponders Bullard’s likely successor.  I think this might be a Zoltan Gera moment…

And Chopper, master of the footballing post-script, has his take on Bullard here.

All good stuff.  For some reason I couldn’t really get anything sensible about Bullard down, so good to see that others have!

An imaginary story about famous people

Prologue: If Angelina Jolie left Brad Pitt to shack up with Russell Brand a few eyebrows might be raised. Not that there’s anything wrong with Russell Brand, but it’s not a direction anyone would have expected Ms Jolie to take. 

*****

Chapter 1:  One morning in January, Angelina left Brad.   You can imagine how all this might have come about:

“I’m going to leave you, Brad. You don’t love me enough.”
“Of course I love you.”
“Well prove it.”
“Prove it? We’re married? We’re together all the time. I’ve stuck by you through all the difficult times. Those times when you thought you were pretty damn important. That Africa business. The UN. If I’m honest I think that went to your head.   You started acting like bloody Bono! You’re only an actress after all. let’s not forget.   But that’s not germane. We’re happy. We’re doing okay, Ang. What more do you want?”
(Angelina pretends to pass out)

*****

Chapter 2:  To those close to the couple the signs had been there for a while, but to Heat readers all over the world this came as a huge surprise.   What to make of it all?  Angelina moved in with Russell Brand.  She wanted more love than Brad could provide, but did she really think she’d be happy with him?  Yes, Brand would give her all the love he had, he’d give her freedom, let her go where she wanted, and not insist that she clean up after herself, but is that worth uprooting a young family for?

*****

Chapter 3:  Could Brad have done more to stop this?  Undoubtedly he could. But the nagging suspicion remains that he didn’t really want Angelina around anymore. It had been great at first, and his friends loved her, but in time her need for attention, her grandiose ideas, well, it’s not what Brad was about.   Sure he’d miss her – even Brad Pitt gets lonely – but there will be other women out there, women who might sometimes listen to him, do what he asked, and most importantly, just shut the **** up once in a while.  No, Brad would be alright.

WTF?

Bullard to Hull?

I mean…. well…. er…. blimey?

Make your own chalkboard!

Here’s the link.

When you’re done you can save your efforts and it gives you a link.   Feel free to paste anyof these links in the comments.

Here’s Moritz Volz and Michael Brown when they were in their pomp.  Very different to the Bullard charts, eh?

A new toy

Pictures only while I make sure they meant for me to share this:

Bullard’s passing: was he being more negative away at Villa?  Looks like it.  But not massively so.

Murphy’s legs:  does he tire in the second half of games?

Simon: left v right

Dickson Etuhu’s passing is generally derided, but apart from the West Ham mishap he has been very (excessively?) careful with the ball.  So when people say “Etuhu’s passing is diabolical” we might question what they mean.  He might like to expand the repertoire to include forward passes, although he hasn’t yet had a decent game to play in.  Two tough away matches and a home battering by Chelsea.  Give him time.

Bobby Zamora’s shooting.  I have a pizza in the oven so I stopped here, but these are his last few shots.  As you can see, we’re going back to mid November.   If the thing is right, he’s simply stopped shooting (there were loads of games with no Zamora shots).  Or stopped getting chances.  I’ll say it again:  he’s not doing so well at the moment, but how much of this is him and how much of this is the system?  And more to the point, how much of the system is affecting him?

One more:

Yes!

There should be a link soon for you to do your own.   Fun, fun, fun.

Fabian Delph will have his revenge on Seattle

Or not.

But The Mail says that Roy Hodgson has been “eyeing” Delph.  Sinister.

And Barra on TiFF says that the club are hopeful of getting something done.

Whew.  He’s supposed to be a bit good.   He’ll cost money but quality is quality.  Roy was at the ground to watch that goal.

Highlights and things

From Virgin.  I meant to have linked to these before but they were offering the incentive of a day’s sky diving for whoever sent them the most visitors so I kept well away just in case.

Good quality highlights.  Were the goals not so obviously bad I could use them for more tactical fiddling.

Instead, some pictures, also from Virgin:

Look at our defenders’ positioning here.   There’s not much West Ham can do that we can’t stop.   It’s why the team places so much emphasis on being set, why the team is so careful in possession, and why I was banging on about Bullard’s mistake at Portsmouth (which Etuhu matched on Sunday).  If you’re set like this then you’re generally going to be alright.   Anyway, Paintsil lost his man here but it’s a lovely picture of what our back eight players are doing when we haven’t got the ball.  Can’t go over, through, round, nothing.  Except…

Ah, what was I saying about moments?  Here’s one.  Brought me to my feet it did.

The home-made reverse angle.

Yay!

But alas, life is hard, and down goes Carlton Cole.

Still.

Yay again!

And one more!

Pffft

Robert Funt spent all his early years in a boys’ reform school in upstate New York, where his father was an administrator and was given a house on the grounds.

Excellent.  This is the start of Robert Funt’s author bio. in Caldecott, his collection of poetry that ranges in subject matter from deodourants to school.  It’s not really my bag, for the most part, but as with all these things you only need one ‘moment’ to make reading the whole thing worthwhile.  Just as a smile can light up a morning, and a bald man scoring a header on the South Coast can make a terrible season feel like the best thing ever.  Moments.  Where are all the moments at the moment?

Some numbers

Here’s the midfield’s passing today:

Murphy 42 of 57, 39 fwd
Etuhu 25 of 27, 9 fwd
Davies 18 of 29, 24 fwd
Dempsey 24 of 31, 19 fwd

First, Bullard usually passes about 60 times a game, and is about as accurate with his passing as Murphy was today.   This doesn’t mean that we didn’t miss Bullard, but in terms of being available, taking the ball, and so on, well Murphy did that today.

Etuhu was actually remarkably careful with the ball, only giving it away twice, but his passing is probably overly safe at this point.

Davies had another off day, but to me it seemed like West Ham were almost targetting him.   He never seemed to have any time on the ball.

Clint did alright.

None of these numbers mean much, perhaps, but something to ponder.

West Ham 3-1 Fulham

Oh well. Long unbeaten runs don’t last forever, and today there can be no complaints. We just weren’t very good.

This year’s success has come from tight defending and opportunist attacking, but today we saw neither. All three concessions were avoidable, and our own goal was an exciting but somewhat flukey screamer from Paul Konchesky. There was no quality today.

John Paintsil had a nightmare in the first-half and gave away West Ham’s opener. He had positioned himself well for a cross, but instead of clearing chose to chest the ball back to Mark Schwarzer. Di Michele saw this coming, nipped in between the two and past Schwarzer in one movement for a nimble but soft opener. Rats.

Fulham equalised halfway through the half under unusual circumstances. A nice right-to-left move from Dempsey to Etuhu to Murphy to Konchesky. The left back galloped forwards, weighed up his options, then let fly from thirty yards. The ball purred into the top corner, Robert Green powerless. Oooooh. 1-1.

We couldn’t build on this. West Ham seem to have a hold on us at the moment and even with this equaliser a result somehow seemed unlikely. The midfield couldn’t compete with Parker and Noble, and while Murphy tried hard, he looks slightly blunted without Bullard out there. Dickson Etuhu had one of those games that makes you wonder if he might be out of his depth at this level. Until the third goal he didn’t do too much wrong, but at this level centre-midfielders have to run games; today Etuhu was bypassed in both phases of the game.

West Ham took the lead again when Carlton Cole dispossessed Paul Konchesky and raced clear. Cole’s diagonal run into the penalty area lacked conviction and seemed set to end with a shot into the stands, but Konchesky obligingly took his legs with a desperate lunge. Penalty, and probably a red card offence, but Konchesky was reprieved. Not for long: Noble sent Schwarzer the wrong way with a confident kick, and that was that.

Then an Etuhu pass was picked off and sent back through our defence, and Carlton Cole scored the third.

Losing isn’t really the problem here. That was bound to happen at some point. No, today was just a bad performance. Andy Johnson might have deserved a 6/10. Possibly Murphy, Hughes and Hangeland a touch below that. Dempsey threatened to threaten. But overall we deserved nothing at all.