Doesn’t happen often does it?

This was Sheffield Wednesday (ta, Jamie), but still…

Some things

Didn’t see today’s game – I opted for Gentleman Jim’s radio broadcast instead -  but thought I’d have a fiddle with the various tools to get a sense of what might have been happening.

One big thing I noted is that our friend Dickson got forward more than he was able to against Blackburn:

A load of passes just outside the box, handy contributions given how careful with the ball he is.    If Dickson was up in attack in an away game this perhaps suggests a slight change in approach, or perhaps merely that we were able to impose ourselves on Bolton.

We haven’t looked at the Telegraph maps for a while, so here’s the last three games:

Blackburn really did trouble us didn’t they?   The Bolton game shows us going in the opposite direction (as the away team), but you can see how Etuhu and Murphy got stuck on the edge of our box against Blackburn.  In the Hull defeat (in which we ran the game) and the Bolton win Etuhu and Murphy were up on the halfway line.  Big, big difference.   It means we’re playing further away from our goal, our midfielders aren’t as far away from our forwards, and our opponents have further to go with the ball when they win it.   We got crazily pushed back against Blackburn, defending ridiculously deep at times.    Nice to see us bounce back so fast.

Finally, a summary of our defensive whodunnits:

Which again shows how well Dickson’s done.   Come into the side, made a lot of tackles and made them well.   We lose a bit going forwards, but the important thing is that he’s extremely careful with the ball, so even if he’s not sending raking long passes down the flanks (although he has done this) he’s keeping possession alive.   Win the ball, pass it off.  That’s all he has to do.

PS I love how people call Zoltan Gera a bottler.  Despite hardly playing this season he’s racked up loads of tackles and won a higher proportion of them than anyone else on the team (apart from the unbeatable Chris Baird).

Away win!

Holy cow.   I’ve done Gentleman Jim today so no idea what to write, but Jamie’s back with a report at some point.  Anyway, great stuff, eh?  Should be just about safe now.

Awards

While the lads polish off Bolton (Jamie’s there and will report back), some good news. CCN has made the Football Fans Census shortlist for “best blog” for the second year in a row! Yay!

Here’s the shortlist.

I have to nominate three pieces that represent the blog.  Does anyone have any suggestions?

Numberdump

Some fiddling with possession stats. This is increasingly the norm in basketball, the idea being that tempo is sometimes misleading. By example, if you have the ball 60 minutes a game and shot 10 times you’re less effective (perhaps) if you have the ball 30 minutes a game and shoot 10 times. That’s the gist.

Minutes per shot then is dependent on possession. Low numbers are better attacking (probably) and high numbers are better when defending.

We’ve also got shots/shots on target ratios.

All broken down by home and aways, and by wins, draws and losses.

H/A	Data
Away games	Sum – Fulham shots	156
	Sum – Fulham o/t	39
	Sum – Opponent Shots	219
	Sum – Opponent o/t	59
	Sum – Mins Att	647.1
	Sum – Mins Def	613.8
	Minutes per shot while attacking	4.2
	Minutes per shot allowed while defending	2.8
	Percentage shots on target	25.00%
	Percentage of opponents shots on target	27.00%
Home games	Sum – Fulham shots	192
	Sum – Fulham o/t	56
	Sum – Opponent Shots	204
	Sum – Opponent o/t	64
	Sum – Mins Att	608.4
	Sum – Mins Def	562.5
	Minutes per shot while attacking	3.2
	Minutes per shot allowed while defending	2.8
	Percentage shots on target	29.00%
	Percentage of opponents shots on target	31.00%
Result	Data
Draws	Sum – Fulham shots	102
	Sum – Fulham o/t	34
	Sum – Opponent Shots	169
	Sum – Opponent o/t	41
	Sum – Mins Att	463.5
	Sum – Mins Def	437.4
	Minutes per shot while attacking	4.5
	Minutes per shot allowed while defending	2.6
	Percentage shots on target	33.00%
	Percentage of opponents shots on target	24.00%
Defeats	Sum – Fulham shots	141
	Sum – Fulham o/t	28
	Sum – Opponent Shots	155
	Sum – Opponent o/t	52
	Sum – Mins Att	465.3
	Sum – Mins Def	435.6
	Minutes per shot while attacking	3.3
	Minutes per shot allowed while defending	2.8
	Percentage shots on target	20.00%
	Percentage of opponents shots on target	34.00%
Wins	Sum – Fulham shots	105
	Sum – Fulham o/t	33
	Sum – Opponent Shots	99
	Sum – Opponent o/t	30
	Sum – Mins Att	326.7
	Sum – Mins Def	303.3
	Minutes per shot while attacking	3.1
	Minutes per shot allowed while defending	3.1
	Percentage shots on target	31.00%
	Percentage of opponents shots on target	30.00%

While we wait for a chinese

Couple of Fulham mentions in the main stream (Guardian):

Bullard dig:

Sunday morning warriors pay for the privilege of playing footie.  International midfielders do not. Still, it is undoubtedly a dream deal for Milan to get a great professional and global marketing icon for about a third of what Hull City paid Fulham for Jimmy Bullard in the last transfer window. No wonder the club’s vice-president Adriano Galliani was generous in his praise for the player.

Rotation:

Rotation is necessary in modern football – as the diverging fortunes of Manchester United, with their huge squad, and Aston Villa, with their slender one, indicate.

Yep.  If we have an achilles heal it’s this.

Lovely obit for Eddie Lowe.  You may not know Eddie Lowe, but he played more games for Fulham than anyone not called Johnny Haynes.   511 appearances in all.   Amazing, even by the standards of the day.   George Cohen, who seems to have a knack for summing up his teammates, said:

“Eddie was a very correct man, and always very well turned out. He had a very good wit and I don’t know anyone that had a bad word to say of him.

“He was a terrific footballer, and complemented Johnny Haynes very well indeed. He was a great tackler and he covered ground very well for a tall man. He was rather unfortunate to not get more caps than the three he did.

“Eddie was quite a bit older than me when I came into the team, but he acted as a tutor of sorts, always offering advice to a young player. Being in the team as a 17-year-old, he had plenty to say to me if it needed to be said, and you took that advice because he was a very experienced man.

“He was one of those guys that you could always rely on and one of nature’s gentlemen. Everybody liked Eddie Lowe.”

Nice one, George, and RIP Eddie.

No Bolton preview on the official site.  Presumably Roy’s not a happy man.   I nipped into Ladbrokes on the way home tonight but couldn’t see anything interesting on their football form.   However, under the league table was the sentance:

“Fulham have scored 3 goals in 14 Premiership away games this season”

And that was it.  The Championship’s fact was “Michael Chopra has scored in the last two games for Cardiff”.

But 3 in 14 games.   That’s about par for the course for a decent attacking midfielder, not an entire team.   When you look at it like that, it’s pretty amazing isn’t it?  Of course we haven’t conceded much either, but still.

Fearless prediction:  goal fest tomorrow.

Stufffffffffff

Good discussion below, folks, nice one.

Further to discussions of depth, Aaron Hughes may be out a while.

“Aaron has pulled a muscle between his ribs,” said Hodgson. “I’m afraid we could be losing him for some time.”

Bad news.

Stadium woes in ‘merica.   That’s pretty extraordinary isn’t it?  The changing face of sport, eh?    Never forget what we have in Craven Cottage…

Inequality.  Is the gap between the big four and the rest why we all get so upset about football here?  Interesting sounding book about how the UK and the US, where wealth is most disproportionately divided, have many woes that more even/fair countries do not.

On rereading I’m not sure if there really is anything we can link to football here, but it is an interesting read:

What is it about unequal societies that causes the damage? Wilkinson believes the answer lies in the psycho-social areas of hierarchy and status. The greater the differential between the haves and have-nots, the greater importance everyone places on the material aspects of consumption; what brand of car you drive carries far more meaning in a more hierarchical society than in a flatter one. It’s the knock-on effects of this status anxiety that finds socially corrosive expression in crime, ill-health and mistrust.

No, there’s really nothing there for us football folk, is there?  Oh well.

The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, is published by Allen Lane at £20.   As with all books (more or less), you can order at Fulham s/t holder Matt Crockatt’s bookshop, Crockatt & Powell.

Fulham 1-2 Blackburn

Here we go again.  Even at 1-0 things felt decidedly wrong.  Then came the goal that Blackburn had threatened all game, then came another, and now we’re a bit more nervous than we thought we’d be.  It’s too early to panic because we really do only need another three or four more points this season, but when form deserts you, other teams start winning, and the fixture list looks unkind, well, it takes balls of steel to keep completely calm.

Which is exactly what I expect Roy Hodgson to do.  The question is, has he got the squad he needs to get the points he needs?  The players we saw today looked ragged, tired, and let’s go further, spent.  We had another very bright opening fifteen minutes, but fell away from there.  It is a concern.

1-0 happened as we were taking our seats, Clint Dempsey (up front today) getting on the end of a long ball and staying on the end of it, then paddling the ball past Paul Robinson from the edge of the box.  It was Dempsey all over, and just what we needed after a trying week.

We could have had more, Simon Davies belting straight at Robinson with a tricky volley, Zoltan Gera heading over from close range (following a clear Blackburn handball – what do we need to do to get a penalty these days?), and various other neat moves suggesting that we were back on track.  But then Morten Gamst Pedersen swung a left footed drive against the very inside of Mark Schwarzer’s post, and the spell was broken.  We survived that, but Blackburn’s 4-3-3 became increasingly hard to play against.  The midfield, with Gera and Davies less stiff than they might have been, found themselves outnumbered and outfought.  So Blackburn were able to pin us back for long periods, the occasional out-ball our only threat, and most of those came straight back.

An equaliser seemed probable, and it arrived in the second half when clown prince El-Hadj Diouf pounced from close range after what was either some more poor defending or a bad piece of linesmanship.  There seemed to be too many Blackburn players in the six yard box, but the goal stood and we all sensed trouble.

Trouble duly arrived with five minutes left when Jason Roberts rolled Tony Kallio in the area and blasted past Schwarzer.  Our ‘keeper made some fine saves tonight, but could do nothing about this one.  Blackburn roared in delight (another team’s season we’ve saved), and there went our point.

Tat-attack

I’m going to Headingly, Leeds on March 31st.  I think I am.  It’s a seminar at the cricket ground.  Not about cricket, but about Treating Customers Fairly in the financial services industry.  Yup.

But the point is that there’ll be a little Yorkshire CCC shop there, which I’m hoping will be full of little goodies.  Perhaps.  Yorkshire is a storied club with a big history, I really can’t wait.

When you think about it, club shops ought to be a last bastion of joy in a miserable retail world.  I mean, go into a sports shop now and you can buy tracksuits, white trainers, and various other ‘fashion’ items, but sports shops are all but dead.  When I was growing up in Bedford we had two:  Bedford Sports, which sold cricket bats, football boots, and all kinds of other sporting equipment; and Sports and Guns, at which we bought darts flights and other miscellany.  Neither did ‘fashion’.  They were sports shops.

At some point sports equipment stopped being profitable, and you have to go to large retail parks for sporting goods now, and even then it’s usually piled high, cheap and nasty stuff.  Rubbish really.  We spent loads of time in the old shops, waiting for buses, practising forward defence shots, bouncing balls.  Happy days.

Now there’s a huge void, and every time I go to a sports stadium I want the club shop to fill it.  There should be all sorts:

Old programmes are a must.  When Dad used to take me to Luton Town as a kid I always had a good rummage through the old programmes box.  We should have those now.  It’d be great.  They should go right back.  People could donate their spares as well.

Books.  You need lots of sports books.  Fulham should sell every available Fulham book, out of print included.  There’s a rant to be had there, but Martin Plumb managed to sell lots of his book without the club, so we’ll leave it there.  But the shop should sell lots of Fulham books.  It just should.

And DVDs.  All the old season in review DVDs should be on sale.  People would buy them, they really would.

Photographs of old players.  There should be lots of 10×8 photos of players like Charlie Mitten, Johnny Haynes, Bedford Jezzard, and all the rest.  We have a rich history.  You should be able to buy pictures of it.

Photographs of current players.  Kids love signed postcards of their favourites.  Even now I have signed photographs of Nasser Hussein, David Gower and Alec Stewart, picked up from various club shops around the country.  They were about 50p each.  I’d buy a signed Dickson Etuhu photo now.

Miscellaneous things.  Surprise us.  Fulham rugs, certainly Fulham duvet covers.  But not things like dog leads.  That’s going too far.  Leave that sort of thing to Chelsea.

And for all this, think about the prices.  You can get nice Fulham clothing… well no, you can’t, but there are some bits that’re alright.  I liked one of the training style tracksuits but it was £90 or something.  ‘kay, I thought, and walked off.  Trying to sell tat benefits nobody.  It’s a terrible missed opportunity, and is costing the club much money.

If the Yorkshire CCC shop is full of rubbish I shall be devastated.  But I am hoping for a nice felt cap, some sort of history book, and perhaps a picture of Geoffrey Boycott making a century.  And maybe some sweatbands, for giggles.

Blackburn

2009 for both sides.

As you can see, Blackburn have tightened things right up under Sam Allardyce.

In our last three games we’ve had 17, 12 and 19 shots, put 9, 3 and 9 on target, and scored 2, 0, 0.   Blackburn have had a fair few shots too, and seem to have had the better of most of their games this season.

So it’s going to be a tough match, particularly as Roy says, when the team haven’t had a week to prepare for a game for a long time.

I get annoyed when people talk about games being must win, because very few are (we saw one at Portsmouth), but this is certainly an important match.  If we win it – and it’s one of our more winnable games remaining – we’re in a very good position.  If we don’t, it doesn’t matter especially, but things could start feeling a bit negative just at the wrong time.  Roy’s clearly a ‘don’t panic’ type, which is why this team hasn’t gone on any crazy runs one way or another this season, just chipping away, picking up points, doing the right things.  Roy understands that we’ll lose games along the way, and is happy with how we’ve performed.  He and the team deserve to see the season out without too much fear.   Tomorrow can go a long way towards making that happen.  And let’s face it, after playing Manchester Utd in that form on Saturday, the lads should find Blackburn much more manageable.

Eddie hits the net

What were we saying yesterday?  Sign Eddie Johnson!

Thanks to TiFF…

Variety

Tevez galloping through acres of bumpy turf, looks up, bang!
Rooney makes time for himself, clips a shot in from the edge of the box.
Park surges onto Gera’s mistake, drives forward and places a firm shot past Schwarzer.

All good goals.

Our last few goals:

Dempsey’s crashing header from a Davies corner
Zamora’s header from the edge of the six yard box
Johnson sticks home the rebound after Zamora’s shot is parried by Carson
Zamora scores from close range
An own goal off a Swansea player’s arse
Nevland pivots and the ball trickles home
Nevland is through and plants the ball beyond James
Dempsey puts Johnson through and his shot beats James

I’ll stop there because to continue would alter the conclusion, but it’s been some time since we scored a goal with anyone but the goalkeeper in the way, isn’t it?   I appreciate that we’ve been hitting bars and posts a fair bit lately, but all of our recent goals have come in situations where the forward has had little option but to shoot, and little in his way before doing so.   Again, in this time Clint’s hit the woodwork from distance twice, Murphy’s done the same, but still.  Do our players make the most of shooting opportunities?

I can’t remember the last time a Fulham player looked up and slotted the ball past a number of defenders and the goalkeeper.  Brian McBride used to be quite good at it, Danny Murphy and Simon Davies would appear to be the type of player to score this sort of goal, but it doesn’t really happen does it?  Are we crafty enough?  Are we skilled enough?  Does any of this matter in the slightest?

Space

I mentioned this below, but there’s an old coaching maxim about making the pitch big when you have the ball, and small when you’re defending.

So when you attack you need to create width and depth.  You create width with your wide men, not necessarily by hugging the touchline, but by pulling defenders away from where they want to be.   So when Rooney dropped out onto the left with the ball and had a surge at Paintsil, this is a problem because Aaron Hughes has to cover him, Hangeland needs half an eye on him, and so on.  So now, when Rooney switches play, as he’s very good at, and Carrick opens up the field and United attack down the right, the defence is stretched massively.

You create depth in various ways, but as best I understand it, this is about having people not in straight lines.  So Tevez and Rooney will drop off one another, maybe into midfield, maybe into the hole.  Berbatov does this a lot too.  Ronaldo goes the other way when he plays.  They give defences problems by not being in predictable areas.

Here’s a picture.

The arrows are jibberish really because players go everywhere, but you get the idea.

In defence you make the pitch small by being compact and harrassing.  United are excellent at this too, with players like Rooney, Tevez, Park and Anderson all surprisingly quick to defend and harry.  The defence is packed tight, with midfield and defence close together, and really there’s no way through.   Fulham are good at this too.

Ignore the fact that I got the CBs the wrong way round, and again, the arrows aren’t that important.  But when you look at it like this after looking at the United chart you see why we might have trouble.   It’s not a new thought, but we really don’t create width, as our wide players don’t play wide and our fullbacks aren’t that good attacking.  Danny Murphy is absolutely brilliant in his central role, but against United he and Etuhu’s lack of variety was found wanting.  Simon Davies could not get much going either.

This also highlights to me how important Clint Dempsey (and Zoltan Gera) are to the side.   I had a diagram like this in my mind yesterday as I watched, because he makes that run time and again doesn’t he?  It is hard to pick up, and with better service could be quite profitable for the side.    But Zamora and Johnson can be a worry.   Zamora pinged in some quite nice balls from the right, but when he drifts left, who has he got to aim at in the middle?   So our crosses are all dependent on someone making ground down the right and finding Dempsey.   Johnson is great at runs beyond the back four, but teams aren’t giving him much space to do this, Zamora’s famed hold up work is partially wasted by the lack of midfield runners, and frankly it’s all a bit predictable.

It’s difficult to write like this after playing Manchester United because everything seems worse than it is, but the game did highlight some of our weaknesses (and strengths too) nicely.   True we created handfuls of chances against WBA and Hull, but again, we didn’t take many of them, perhaps because the defence was not unduly stretched so the forwards didn’t get clean strikes/were pressured.    I’m very reluctant to sit here and play armchair coach when plainly I know little about the subject matter, but the more I think about it the more I wonder if Zoltan Gera’s wonderful late runs would help.   Ifs and buts enfuriate people, but were it not for a few centimetres here and there he could still be our top scorer this season.  As it was, when he was in the team he kept hitting the bar and post, but how many players have shown an ability to come that close since his omission?   He and Dempsey have the ability to find space in the penalty box, something other Fulham players don’t do.  Are we hindering ourselves by only playing one of them?

Where to play Gera is anyone’s guess.  I don’t think we can play without Dempsey, Murphy and Etuhu is a good pairing (you might initially have gone with Murphy and Dempsey but not now), so that leaves Zamora and Davies as ‘maybes’.   I wouldn’t drop Davies and I don’t want Dempsey up front, which means you have to get away from the 4-4-2, which we won’t do, or play Gera up there, which won’t work either.

In short, there is no easy answer and I expect to keep on as we are!

This started as a discussion about space, and just as United are masters at making it, we always give the appearance of having to navigate a very congested field when in attack.   Perhaps it’s just speed of thought and foot – certainly United are great at both and we are not especially – or perhaps it’s just the way we play, but it will be interesting to see what we do next.   It is, as I have been at pains to point out, too much to expect a club like ours to become masters of the game at both ends of the pitch, and we have sensibly opted for defensive stability over attacking wizardry, but it’s becoming something of an elephant in this room and is clearly ‘the next challenge’ for Hodgson (and Mackintosh).

Evidence

Well, it was a cup game so I took the opportunity to bag us some prime seats.  Usually I’m in the back corner of JH, the cheapest seats in the ground, but yesterday we wer just behind the dugout.   Good tip when bringing significant others who aren’t always that into football:  get close to the action.   Hade loved it, as did I.  Shame I’ll never sit there again, but hey, here are some photos.

Bob outjumped by Vidic.  I show this only to ask why it is that forwards jump upwards to high balls, but defenders take a run at it (and therefore win most challenges).  Why don’t forwards take an angle too?

Clint fights off Anderson.  He must have tussled with 6-7 United players yesterday.

Star of wonder star of light, save us from humiliation tonight.

Stop that man!  Stop him!  Or at least slow him down.  Mark, cover the top corner!

It all got too much and David Lloyd charged down to the dugout to remonstrate with Roy Hodgson.   Not really, he won the Fulham Flutter (again!).

Roy removes chewing gum?  No, just worried.

Roy is angry.

Fulham 0-4 Man Utd

Good grief.  Is the gap really this wide?  Today’s hammering was pitifully predictable, with United strolling around the Craven Cottage turf like half-hungry lions at a wildebeast convention.  There was only ever going to be one result.  We are certainly not on our way to Wembley.

And so, after some diversionary early pressure from Fulham, came the opening goal.  A corner was not cleared and Carlos Tevez headed home from a yard out.  That was that really.  This United defence is impossible to break down; Fulham don’t score goals; were we really going to storm back?  Of course not.

As the second half drew to a close Tevez slashed through our half unchallenged, cut inside Dickson Etuhu and hammered a drive into the top corner of Mark Schwarzer’s net.  Terrific goal, no doubt, but we didn’t make things particularly difficult for him.

Wayne Rooney added a third just after half-time, as Hangeland’s clearing pass evaded Etuhu, Rooney teased for a moment, then slotted the ball home from outside the area.  It felt soft, irrelevant almost.

Roy Hodgson realised the game was up and removed Murphy, Johnson and Zamora, with Dacourt, Kamara and Gera coming on.  Dacourt’s experience is all well and good, but on recent evidence he is either some way from match sharpness or, if we’re being blunt, past it.  Kamara’s headless chicken routine may occasionally produce something worthwhile, but more often does not, and Gera looks like his lack of recent match action has affected him.  He’s a good player who was slightly unlucky at the start of the season, but his performance today was not good.

United’s fourth came after a precarious series of short, sharp Fulham passes found Gera on the left.  Gera looked up, saw nothing obvious on (United are a fantastic defensive side), so forced the issue with a cross-field pass that Ji-Sung Park intercepted.  Park steamed into the box and bent the ball around Aaron Hughes and past Mark Schwarzer.  Another one.

United’s fans sang with joy, revelling in their success.  It felt rather like listening to someone boasting about their new 4×4 for half an hour.

There’s no sense in getting too upset at defeats like this.  They are a fine side, we merely an improved one.  The concern is that today only Paintsil and Dempsey really looked like the match meant something, and while I know that this was not the case, it wouldn’t have done us any harm to make things trickier for United out there.   We treated Michael Carrick like some kind of deity, deferentially leaving him alone while he went about picking us apart.   Anderson is a decent player who may become a good one, but he had an easy time of it in the middle of the pitch.  United had O’Shea and Fletcher on the right hand side, and while these players are certainly underrated, in this side they surely count as weakish links.

But no.  We weren’t good enough, and there’s no shame in that.   Let’s hope that the lads can pick themselves up for Blackburn’s visit on Wednesday.   A win there would help everyone to relax again.

We’re never gonna score!

Ha!  Beavis understands our forwards’ pain.  If you only watch one YouTube clip I post make it this one…

Beavis: Damn it, this always happens. I think I’m gonna score, and then I never score. It’s not fair. We’ve traveled, um, a hundred miles ’cause we thought we were gonna score. But now it’s not gonna happen. Damn it!
Bus Driver: Hey, buddy, sit down.
Beavis: Shut up, ass-wipe! I’m sick and tired of this. We’re never gonna score. It’s jut not gonna happen. We’re just gonna get old like these people, but they’ve probably scored.
Bus Driver: Hey, I’m warning you. Sit down!
Beavis: [motioning to Martha] It’s, like, this chick’s a slut. And look at this guy, he’s old, but he’s probably scored a million times.
Old Guy: [nodding] Oh, yeah.
Beavis: But not us. You know, we’re never gonna score. We’re never gonna score! We’re never gonna score!

Roy Hodgson and Urge Overkill

The Times has a nice profile on Roy.

Roy on video.

Urge Overkill, Dropout:

That’s a song.

I must stress that I have a good feeling about tomorrow.    I knew we’d lose to Hull, knew it.   But I also think we might give United a fearful scare tomorrow.

Idea for a new formation

I played a 2-5-3 last night, and it worked a treat.  Most of the goals came from slick interplay between the forwards and screaming drives from right back.

Cafe Kick in London – excellent place.

And now, a propos of nothing:

Fulham 0-1 Hull

See, in my mind that finished 0-0.  And I’m annoyed at that.

On further reflection perhaps it’s best to mark this down to ‘one of those things’ and move on.   A small squad with a regular lineup playing twice a week is bound to run out of gas at some point; we must hope that this was a refueling stop rather than a permanent breakdown.

The former seems likely.  In the wider analysis we did thoroughly outplay our opponents.  Chances – not good chances, but takeable chances – came and went all night, and on a different day this could have been a comfortable victory.  It wasn’t, in the main because Hull managed to disrupt us to the point where our play became too ragged, lacking its usual composure, and because were weren’t given a fairly obvious penalty when Zamora was bear-hugged in the area in the second half.  Otherwise it just didn’t really happen for us on any number of levels, and Hull duly stole all the points with a late, late Manucho winner which came out of nothing, dumbfounded the crowd and angered the players.     

The hallmark of the 2009 Fulham side has been some spritely performances from Danny Murphy, supported by a dashing Davies and a thundering Dempsey, with Dickson Etuhu patrolling behind, keeping it simple in attack and easing opponents off the ball in defence.  We had most of that tonight, except Murphy’s passing went haywire and Davies couldn’t shape the game.  Dempsey, starting to look knackered, gave his all again, and looked our most likely goalscorer.  Again he showed some impressive long range shooting, including a fierce strike in the second half that Matt Dukes just managed to keep out.  Sooner or later one of these is going to fly into the top corner.   Etuhu’s progress continued, and while his recent thunderbolts were not repeated tonight, his all-around game was excellent.  He was probably our man-of-the-match, and was visibly distraught at the final whistle, storming off down the tunnel with eyes of thunder and the bearing of a wronged man.

It was simply not to be.  The Zamora-Johnson axis looked slightly off-kilter, and increasingly we seemed reliant on our full-backs for attacking substance.  This is partly where the current team can fall down.  When the middle is sealed off we have no way to go around the sides.  Paintsil and Konchesky are good defenders and able attackers, but their crossing is a shade under par and, in any case, we lack the nous to get on the end of good deliveries.    Our best sniper, Johnson, is rarely finding space in the box, and only Clint Dempsey (and the presumably refreshed Zoltan Gera) has the instincts to get on the end of these balls, and that’s happening irregularly too.

However, we must not get too downhearted.  These results can happen, and just as Hodgson will not get carried away with our good form, nor will he fret unduly at results like this.   Bring on United.

The nightmare in Sheffield and the evolution of our fullback play

One of the nice things with the guardian chalkboards is that you can have a look back and remind yourself what happened in certain games.  They only go back to 2006-07, but hey.   The above is an interesting study in fullbacks, taken from that god-awful game in Sheffield.  As a reminder, this was one of those late January Tuesday nighters, and for reasons beyond me now I went along.   It was a terrible game, we were dire, Sheffield United scored twice, and we all went home.   To end my nightmare I spent £20 on a taxi at 230am to take me from Hammersmith to Tooting, thus losing whatever financial advantage I might have gained from going by coach.

A feature of latter day Chris Coleman sides was the excessive use of fullbacks for out balls.  The team would try to build up, find nothing available, then shift the ball to either fullback.  The fullback would have no options either, so would aim to hit the front man, either McBride or Helguson, with a long ball.   Said front man would try to head the ball, and perhaps into the path of someone else in a white shirt.   It didn’t really work, as the midfield rarely supported the forwards and the approach made life easy for defenders.   This game must be a low point for this ‘approach’, only to an extent I could never have guessed at until I looked it all up.   Some galling numbers:

Team passes:  330
Successful: 176
Unsuccessful: 154

That’s amazing.

Liam Rosenior, 71 passes, 37 successful, 34 unsuccessful
Franck Quedreue, 39 passes, 12 successful (!), 27 unsuccessful

That’s frightening.

We weren’t always that bad, but it just goes to show what can happen when a team isn’t set up properly.  I don’t really blame the players – it must have been frustrating to them to essentially play ‘random’ football – but either way, it’s not good.

Fastforward to the Chris Baird era:

At the top you see him against Boro at home, lots of dinks down the line and 45 degree passes.   Underneath we see him at home to Villa last year (now under Roy Hodgson).  Look at all the short passes around the halfway line.  Not perfect but much more careful, possession being retained if possible rather than kicked away.   We saw the full evolution of all this the other day, when I showed his Arsenal chart, which contained barely a red arrow.

That’s progress.  And it also suggests that much of what we perceive to be ‘player’ is in fact ‘coach’.   Sometimes a player isn’t given a chance to be what he can be.