Fulham 3-1 Liverpool

The trouble with playing the big sides is that the games can be a bit dull.  Typically said big side keeps the ball, Fulham stand off, keep shape, but don’t do much going the other way.  It can make for a painful watching experience, a reminder of everything Fulham are not and may never be.  The worst such game was when Arsenal beat us 3-0 a year ago, and we didn’t get near them all match.

Today felt like it was going to be like that.   Liverpool kept the ball for about 10 minutes from the kickoff, but then Fulham put the cat amongst the pigeons with a goal against the run of play, Damien Duff (how important he is) firing across the area for Bobby Zamora to slot home, right footed.   Liverpool were stunned by this unexpected twist, but soon got going again.  Red shirts surged towards the Hammersmith End, with Benayoun tormenter in chief with some snaking runs through the midfield.  It was a puff out your cheeks and fight for it game now, but by and large our defence did its job.   John Paintsil cleaned out Fernando Torres with about as hard a tackle as you can get away with in the modern game.  Fulham meant business.

But Torres is not spoken of as the world’s best striker for nothing.  As half-time drew near the ball dropped to him on the edge of our area.  A good player might have made something of the situation, Torres belted the ball past Schwarzer on the volley.  It was a breathtaking finish, stunning in its execution, ferocious power and impeccable technique.  Wow.

The concern now was that a 4-1 scoreline loomed, but Torres was frequently seen hobbling, bending over, grimacing.  My mind wandered into schadenfreudous territory.  He’s injured!  Yes!  Is he injured?  Please let him be injured.  I’m not a bad person for thinking that?  Of course I’m not.  We need him off the pitch.

And off the pitch he went, on the hour.  My chronology may be off here, but at this point the game went apocalyptic.  Zamora – who had another of his “best game in a Fulham shirt” days, scampered into the box, was surely hauled down, and was not awarded a penalty.   The ground howled in disbelieving anger.  How was this not a penalty?  How?  Lee Mason, who had been erring Liverpool’s way all match, was now public enemy number one.

He atoned for this by dismissing two Liverpool players.  The first (Degen?) lunged into Clint Dempsey and saw straight red.  The second, Jamie Carragher, occurred after Zamora had again wrestled his way free of his markers and was bearing down on the Liverpool goal.  Carragher may well have been the last man, and it may well have been a foul, but it felt like we were being paid back for the penalty non-decision.

The game was great fun at this point, not least because Erik Nevland had already made it 2-1, backheeling home following a neat knockdown from the impressive Gera.  Later, with the freedom of the park (we were now playing against nine men, including two Liverpool youth teamers), Fulham waltzed through on goal again, Dempsey taking care of business with an assured left-foot finish past a bemused, furious Pepe Reina.  Did I say the game was going to be a bit dull?   Quite the opposite!

3-1 to the Whites (we’re just not a 3-1 side are we?), Liverpool had withdrawn some key players, and were effectively surrendering the points.  This doesn’t happen every day, their season is all but ruined, and our boys seem to keep getting better.  Something is wrong at Anfield, the wheels are coming off as a succession of poor signings fail to add to the Gerrard/Torres core.  For us it’s a time to again sit back and wonder how on earth we got to this point, having been down so long so recently.   Wow.  Get Mr Hodgson a new contract before someone steals him.

A reminder

This was just before we visited Reading.   They had six points on Bolton and eight on us.   Birmingham had six points on us and two on Bolton for that matter.     That day we had a bit of fun.    Hade was driving so Toby and Matt headed over to ours, and stopped off at the Tooting branch of Woolworth’s (now history) for some inflatables.   These inflatables were to appear on countless TV cameras during the run-in, but really it was a bit of “oh well, we’re going down” fun as best I remember.

Hade and I were by the corner flag that day and early on the heavens opened.   We got drenched.   Then the sun came out, we scored, we hit the cross-bar three times, then finally Simon Davies put Erik Nevland through and the latter sealed the game and began a run of form that pretty much ensures that he’ll always be remembered.

We still had to beat City away, Birmingham at home and Portsmouth away, but hey, somehow all that happened and Reading went down on goal difference.

Crazy.

Now look:

No point pretending it couldn’t have been us.   It could so easily have been us.  It probably should have been us.

I’m not sure that being in the Premiership is the be all and end all, but let’s not forget how lucky we are.    I haven’t got a particularly strong point to make here, but, well, you know where I’m coming from, right?

Liverpool tomorrow.   There are many fixtures I get more excited about, but at the moment I’m living for 3pm tomorrow afternoon.

Duff

Back on the old UEFA coaching site.  Watching Roy talk about 3-5-2 and the limitations of three centre-backs, he starts talking about why three centre backs sometimes don’t want to leave the middle of the field.    He notes that these players are good headers of the ball, good tacklers, etc, but they are often reluctant to get out on the flanks where they have to face….

“A Damien Duff, or an Arjen Robben, or a Cristiano Ronaldo”

Looks like he rates our man Duff highly.   And why not?   He looks like a real coup.    Duff’s put more balls into the box than any other Fulham player I imagine, and probably by a fairly wide margin.  And he shoots on target.   Great signing.

New third kit. ‘Round Midnight

It’s in “Midnight Blue” says the club.

And here’s Danny Murphy wearing the new kit at Craven Cottage, at midnight, to prove it.   Captain Marvel.

Did you know that ‘Round Midnight, the jazz standard, appears on over 1,000 albums?   Wikipedia says so, citing allmusic.com.

‘Round Midnight was initially composed by Thelonious Monk.

That’s an amazing picture, and this is one of my favourite album covers:

How funny is that?

Anyway, the new shirt’s on sale now.

Meanwhile: Barcelona put six past Zaragoza

You have to enjoy this team while it’s doing its thing.   Amazing football…

Fulham v Bookmakers, 2009/10

A few numbers to have a peer at.

First thing that jumps out:  when the bookies have not got our games quite right (4/9), all four results have been in our favour.

That’s interesting isn’t it?  I appreciate that bookmakers’ odds are not the be all and end all, but they are a good neutral barometer of what we might generally expect to happen in a game.

Throw in the European results – beating top seeds Basel and almost beating Roma – and things really do look quite good for the whites at the moment.

The other thing I was looking at is the Johnson v Kamara comparison, but I don’t know that there’s much of a story here.  Kamara’s come in and done well, but I don’t know that it means anything other than that he’s a decent player who’s playing like a decent player.  Equally, Johnson’s acquitted himself quite well when fit.    It’s not really an either/or situation because when Johnson’s fit he’ll play, but when this happens I think there’s a good argument for giving Kamara at least half an hour a game, especially away from home where he’s done a lot of his best work over the last couple of seasons.

A major boon for us going forward has been the relatively decent form of our front players, but perhaps more important has been Damien Duff’s fine play and the consistent attacking menace of Dempsey on the other wing.  All of which means that we now seem to have several attacking players on the same page.

Jamie’s report: Man City 2-2 Fulham

Our man in the North was at Eastlands on Sunday:

Man City 2-2 Fulham

A crazy match, as our trips to Eastlands always seem to be. The common factor, of course, is the home side: City’s star-studded ranks play with such abandon – committed to attack despite leaving generous space behind – that it seems Hodgson’s normally conservative outfit can’t help but join in the fun. This was another end-to-end thriller, and great entertainment again.

City had the better of the first half. Adebayor, save for his needless attempts at conning the referee, lead the line impressively, whilst Tevez tormented our full-backs with mesmeric, magnetic dribbles without ever quite producing an end product. Their best chance fell to Nigel De Jong, who found himself with a shooting opportunity after a fortunate deflection but was denied by Schwarzer. Later, Richards seemed unlucky to have a headed effort ruled out for a foul.

At the other end Fulham were creating openings too. Baird and Greening both saw decent shots whistle wide, whilst the chance of the half fell to Diomansy Kamara who was slipped through nicely by Zamora, only to take a heavy touch and see the ball smothered by Given. A bad miss, by anyone’s standards.

Worse was to come. With the second period only a few minutes old, Kamara made one of his typical runs: seeming to go nowhere but suddenly, randomly getting past a couple of players and opening things up. From the left, he fed a lovely pass into Dempsey, whose shot was parried by Given into the path of Zamora – four yards out, with all the time in the world and the goal gaping. He blazed over.

City then struck twice in quick succession – a scrappy goal from a corner (disappointing, and the set-piece consolations are mounting up this season) followed by a nicely worked effort from Petrov after exchanging passes with Gareth Barry (perhaps Greening went to ground too easily here). Zamora, as the saying goes, must have wanted the ground to swallow him up.

But to Bobby’s credit, he kept going – continuing what was in fact his third impressive performance of the week, shocking miss aside. Almost immediately after Petrov’s strike, it was Zamora’s chest-down from Kelly’s ball in which allowed Damien Duff to screw a shot past Given and put us back in the game, at 2-1.

Amazingly, within minutes we were level. Greening sent a free-kick into the box where Demspey bundled it in like only Dempsey can – heading slowly, precisely, agonizingly into the corner of the net under seemingly impossible pressure from his marker. Bedlam and incredulity in the away end – reminiscent of the great escape’s greatest game, two seasons ago. “We’ve come from two down, we’ve come from two do-o-own, it must be City, we’ve come from two down…”
All this and there were still 25 minutes remaining. From this point it could have gone either way: our best chance came when Zamora turned powerfully past Toure before shooting wide, whilst City had a succession of corners in the closing minutes as we continued our habit of sitting too deep with a result in sight.

No matter, on this occasion: finally, the whistle blew and it was over. Somehow, despite the unlikely comeback, it felt disappointing. What if our strikers had put their early chances away? Still – a point not to be sniffed at, and after the trip to West Ham, a second very entertaining away game in a row. Compared to last year’s travels, this is vintage stuff. Next stop: Rome!

Fulham 1-1 Roma

Devastating finale, of course, but have you ever seen such a good football match?

Fulham fired out of the traps like men possessed.  In 3 minutes Greening struck hard and low, the shot parried well.  Our players passed quickly and effectivelyy, and Roma didn’t see the ball until 6 minutes were on the clock.    The combinations, particularly down the right flank, were sensational.  Bjorn Helge Riise shuttled around his brother with wonderful regularity, Bobby Zamora led the line superbly, and Roma were on the back foot.

We won a series of corners, most delivered by Riise with great power and accuracy.  Nobody got on the end of them, but momentum was building.  Another corner, Mart says to me “Hangeland hasn’t scored for a year”, at which Hangeland leaps high and scores.   Terrific delivery again.  Riise deserves a lot of the credit for the goal.

Roma come to life.  Daniele Di Rossi bosses the midfield, showing astonishing vision in sweeping the ball around the field.  The slippery Jeremy Menez is floating around, a man without a position, and as yet on the periphery, but his time will come.  A Roma corner, Jon Arne Riise volleys, power, incredible strike, incredible save.  How did he get that on target?  How did Schwarzer keep it out.

The second half gets even better.  Zamora and Kamara combine expertly on the break and are proving a real handful.  But Fulham can’t keep possession.  Roma bring on Vucinic, Perrotta, Pizarro.  All look phenomenal, Vucinic blasts a fearsome drive from distance that catches Schwarzer by surprise, but our man keeps it out again.  Pizarro is playing as a deep lying playmaker, and now Menez is getting more and more involved.  The Frenchman plays like Clint Dempsey with lightning pace, and soon he’s charging in at our defenders at frightening angles.   They stand firm, but you can’t block these players out, they have too many ways to attack.   Their version of Riise, now ascendant over ours, charges into the box and is brought down by Stephen Kelly.  Kelly eventually sees red.  Menez hits the penalty low to Schwarzer’s right, Schwarzer keeps it out.   Amazing.

Zamora has been withdrawn.  This is a puzzler in some respects:  while Nevland is devastating on the counter, won’t we miss Zamora’s hold up play?  Sure enough, we can’t keep the ball.  Punt after punt after punt lands in the Roma half and is recycled into another attack.  The lads are defending like demons out there, but surely they can’t hold out.  Gera, Baird, Hughes, Hangeland, Duff, all are immense defensively, all doing their bit.

But as time runs out Roma earn another corner and the ball falls to Andreolli, whose shot smashes in dramatically off the bar from close range.  Emphatic, fantastic, devastating.   Final whistle follows seconds later.

Roma deserved that, I haven’t seen a team play such appealing football for a long time, but how harsh on the Fulham players?   Whew.   What a night.   Nobody will forget this one.

If I were a rich man…

Check this out:  a ball from each World Cup.   There’s a mini version too.

Iconic?  Yes, but that’s marketing speak isn’t it?  They’re just flat out tremendous.

Numberwang

It’s been a while since I bored you with numbers, so:

These are the numbers for the season to-date.   What stands out?

Involvement: This is passes per minute on the pitch.  It doesn’t mean anything but it’s a fair proxy for how much someone’s doing while they’re out there.

I confess that this whole exercise came about following the news that we’ll be without Danny Murphy for 3 months.   This presumably means a promotion for Jonathan Greening, something that will frighten the masses but which I don’t think will be an issue.   Greening has been as involved as anyone, more than anyone in fact (skewed by that 90 pass game against Villa), and has passed more accurately than anyone, too.

Again, this is not proof of anything, and we know that many of these passes have been of the safe, sideways variety.   This said, I maintain that as long as someone in the side can make things happen then having a midfield pairing that is very careful with the ball is not necessarily a bad thing.   So if Greening’s not going to unlock tight defences, at least he can be relied upon to put in a decent shift.   This isn’t the numbers talking now, incidentally, but my eyes – I think he’s done okay since he signed for us.

Creating chances: so yes, we need someone to make things happen.  Top chance creators (passes that lead to shots, I think) are Bobby Zamora, Zoltan Gera and Damien Duff.   This figures:  Zamora’s the most advanced player and does tend to make opportunities for others.    Gera has had a good season so far, and Duff has a unique (in this squad) ability to put balls into the box.  Check his Chalkboard after any game and you’ll see Duff pinging balls into dangerous areas.   Few other Fulham players do this.   He’s a real asset.

Shooting: on Monday, either in my head or out loud (I can’t recall which), I mentioned that Duff seems to have a happy knack of shooting hard and on target.   This is noted by the number men:  Duff has hit the target with six of his eight shots.   This is another feather in his cap, and at this point he looks like he could be a terrific attacking player who really does bring something different to the team.   The much maligned Zamora has hit the target with over half of his shots, and has scored twice already (that’s eight goal a season pace!).    The red flag in all this is our friend Dempsey, who’s shot twice as often as the next highest player (26, to Zamora’s 13), but hit the target only five times.    Part of this is the type of shot he’s taking, of course.

Last year I studied shots on target and noted that everyone’s had declined on previous career levels.  I shared this information with Ian Graham at The Times, who observed some differences in the numbers but broadly agreed with the pattern.   He identified Danny Murphy as someone whose shooting accuracy had particularly suffered in 08/09, I noted Murphy’s deeper role, he checked back and found that, yes, Danny Murphy in 08/09 was shooting from an average of five yards per shot deeper than Murphy in 07/08.     Numbers, numbers, numbers, but the point is clear:  shoot from further away and you’re less likely to shoot on target.   Which brings us back to Clint.

The goals of Clint Dempsey:

Villa away:  left footed one on one with keeper
Spurs home:  thumping header inside box
Wigan away:  slots home left footed from close in
Reading home:  bundled in from close range
Wigan home:  stabbed in from 15 yards
Spurs away:  bundled in from close range
Portsmouth home:  rammed home from close in
Boro home:  slots home when put clean through
Chelsea home:  (1) flips home from close in;  (2) headers in from corner
Blackburn home:  one on one with keeper, scores
City away:  (1) slots home after Zamora robbed; (2) nice finish after Zamora’s good work

You see the point don’t you?   Yes, he did hit a screamer in the Europa League this season, but generally speaking Clint scores a certain type of goal, and this year he hasn’t been getting into the positions to do this.    It’s early days and he’s been excitingly aggressive when we’re going forward, but perhaps it’s time to forget ideas of bursting the net and concentrate on those wonderfully timed runs that we know he’s so good at.  It’s a fine line, as often Dempsey looks like the only player on the pitch who might make something from nothing, but with Duff playing so well and Zamora giving a ’so-far-so-good’ account of himself there is room for Clint to… pick his spots.    Maybe away from home we need these shots, but at home, with the full-backs and Duff sticking the ball into the area with fair regularity, we need him to get into the box and start scoring some ugly goals.

Red Sox and Fulham?

Got word of this via Dan and had to chime in.

This isn’t the worst news we’ll ever hear.  The Red Sox, until they got rich and smart, had gone a looong time without winning anything.   There have been great Red Sox teams over the years, and great players, but one way or another, until this century, they had been famously futile, playing second fiddle to the high spending/better run Yankees, who racked up championship after championship.

There is much in common between Fulham and the Red Sox, not least the places they play.  We all know about Craven Cottage, but Fenway Park is very much baseball’s equivalent, a knackered old stadium that reminds people of how the game used to be. So just as we might close our eyes and see Johnny Haynes marshalling his team around the grass, Boston fans have Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived, to conjure up in their minds.  Williams was in some way a nearly man, a man who scaled tremendous heights but missed part of his career to the war, and who sometimes lacks the all-round skills of others when the game’s greats are considered.     Williams was widely recognised by fans, and had an incredible career, but while he was doing this Joe DiMaggio was winning the silverware with the Yankees and dating Marilyn Monroe.     In the same way Johnny Haynes is known, is revered, but played his entire career for Fulham, missed the big World Cup through injury, and probably doesn’t get the due he deserves.   The comparison is a bit of a stretch, but it’s not a bad one either.

Fenway Park is famous for a large wall in left field, called The Green Monster.   A lot of old ballparks were built in condensed city spaces so had to make do accordingly.  It led to some wonderful asymetrical outfields (modern stadium designers add these quirks deliberately now), and ensured that all parks played slightly differently.  In Boston’s case the distance from home plate to the left field outfield fence is too short, so to compromise they built a very high wall.

Here’s a picture:

Here are some of those asymetrical outfields that I love so much:

Dimension of Fenway as they were in 1912.

This is The Polo Grounds, long since demolished, but central to Don Delillo’s Underworld book.  This was the home of the New York Giants, who later moved to San Francisco.

Ebbets Field, New York, where the Brooklyn Dodgers played before moving to L.A.

There were  a lot of wonderful old stadia but they got knocked down in the name of progress, mainly in the late 60s and 70s, but many after that, too.

Here’s a photo of Ebbets Field.   You can see what I mean about the streets:

This photo has Yankee Stadium (recently remade) in the foreground, but check out the Polo Grounds over the river, further back:

I could go on forever, but the old ballparks were pretty special, and many of the parks that replaced them have since been replaced.   Meanwhile, only the Red Sox and the Cubs have proper old time parks now, which is a huge shame.    The same applies to Fulham, to an extent.     Which is why this is a match that makes sense.

There is some concern about possible re-naming Craven Cottage, but we’ll just have to wait and see on this one.  Fenway Park is still Fenway Park, after all.  And for those people who insist the club isn’t ‘pushing on’, well there generally isn’t money to do so.   Selling the naming rights, though, would bring in a lot of money, money we won’t otherwise see.   Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t like to see the ground renamed, and am happy with the state of the club now, but it would be negligent of the board to not consider these things.

Hey ho.  We shall see.

Fulham 2-0 Hull City

This should have been a comfortable game and in the end it was.  2-0 perhaps flattered Hull but after last season this was all about three points.  We have more tough games ahead, and this gives us some breathing space.

Fulham lined up with Damian Duff and Chris Baird partnering Murphy and Dempsey in midfield, and Diomansy Kamara partnering Zamora up front.  All three of the irregulars played well, with the Duff and Dempsey wing combination showing glimpses of promise.   Clint’s shooting boots are still elsewhere, and his all-around play was a little ragged, but the pair of them looked likely to do some damage all evening.  At some point they’re going to give someone a hammering.

For what seems like hours the game yawned through the motions, with an uncommon amount of head tennis in the middle third and lots of possession for Hangeland and Hughes.  Hull stood off, content to squeeze the midfield and pressurise that part of the pitch.  So we saw a lot of successful passing around the back four, and lots of unsuccessful passing beyond that.   Only Duff showed signs of rising above the messiness, ghosting into space in awkward places and showing some nice touches in so doing.   Going the other way, Hull aimed at Jan Venegoor of Hesselink’s head, and for a time he seemed to be getting the better of Hughes, but nothing much came of all this and Mark Schwarzer had little to do.

The old line about two bald men fighting over a comb sprang to mind, but just as half-time approached, Fulham scored.  That man Duff again found space and slung a wicked shot at goal.  Boaz Myhill dived low to his left parried the ball back out, but only as far as Bobby Zamora, who twisted through the air and – miraculously, it must be said – managed to return it back into the net.  He’s missed a lot of easier chances than that, but credit where it’s due: that was a handy piece of work.

A good change of impetus going into half-time then.  The second half exploded into life when Phil Brown reintroduced Jimmy Bullard.  It seemed like a very Phil Brown thing to do.  Bullard, who was a very important member of our Great Escape side, had been a crowd favourite until his ill-judged Football Focus comments about going on strike for a better pay deal.  Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation I’m sure we can all understand why he did what he did (I have changed jobs for better money) and while it all got a bit messy in the end, we got five million for him and have improved since.  So it would have been nice to give him a gentle welcome, some pantomime booes, then get on with the football.

We got the boos alright, and Brown’s substitution had the unfortunate effect of waking up a dormant crowd.  Hull found themselves under massive pressure, and soon Zamora squared across the six yard box and Kamara bundled home from close range.  Soon afterwards some slick buildup play led to Clint Dempsey firing just wide from the edge of the box, and momentum was building.

Meanwhile, Bullard, perhaps shaken by his welcome, was in overdrive.  The ball followed him all over the pitch, there he was at left back coming short, then in the hole behind the forwards, then even in midfield.  He collected, passed, ran.  Hull earned a free-kick in shooting range, Geovanni (Hull’s free kick specalist) lined up, Bullard, desperate to prove something, stood directly in front of him, and thwacked the ball into the wall.

Which summed things up.  For all Bullard’s huff and puff, Chris Baird calmly repelled everything.  Baird was overshadowed in Bullard’s reign.  I remember a time when Baird, scared of making mistakes, was passing to Bullard all game, no more than a yard at a time.  Baird would receive the ball, Bullard would hare over, Baird would give it to Bullard.  Repeat.  Now we see Baird confidently whipping balls all over the pitch, playing with exquisite appreciation of space and time, and looking every inch the Premiership midfielder.  True, this was Hull he was dealing with, but he was excellent.

Bullard’s quest continued, and now the Hammersmith End may have crossed a line, taunting the player on the subject of his injuries.  It led to a slightly uneasy atmosphere, which the singers perhaps tried to retrieve with a hearty round of “one Roy Hodgson”.  This week Hodgson had spoken in the press about his hopes for a decent reception for Bullard, so was perhaps unimpressed.

Fulham lost Danny Murphy on the hour, but Jonathan Greening looked good in his stead, and the game wound down with some ebb and flow but no real danger of the result being overturned.  We now face Roma on Thursday, then travel to Manchester City.  Tough company we keep these days, eh?

Black and white field generals

We’re just back from spending the weekend with my Dad in the countryside.   Funny, spending some time away from the city, messageboards, newspapers… football loses some of its importance.    It still is important, but so are trees and seasons and all that sort of thing you never get to think about in the city.   Country air gets you, in a good way, and last night I was in the land of nod soon after Match of the Day had started.   Happy.

But this doesn’t mean I’m not itching to get to the ground tomorrow.   Fulham v Hull City, first game in ages that we should really be expecting to win.  That’s the nice thing about Roy Hodgson’s team:  we tend to avoid nasty surprises at home games.    You don’t need me to remind you what happened in this game last year, but it was one of those silly games where we could have won 4-0 but nothing went our way.  That’s the game.

To leave you, here’s an excerpt from Eric Nisenson’s “Ascension – John Coltrane and his quest”:

When he [any good jazz musician] improvises successfully on the stand or in the recording studio, it is only after much thought, practice and theory have gone into that conception, and it is that conception which makes him different from other jazz musicians.     Once he knows what he is doing, in other words, he can let himself go and finds areas of music through improvisation he didn’t know existed.  Jazz improvisation, therefore, is based on a paradox – that a musician comes into a bandstand so well prepared that he can fly free through instinct and soul and sheer musical bravey into the musical unknown.   It is a marriage of both sides of the brain, so that this music has coherence as well as, in Whitney Balliet’s well-worn but wonderful phrase, “the sound of surprise”.

Cool, eh?   Let’s hope Roy and the boys can come up with some magic tomorrow.

Chris Smalling

Taking a cue from Dan, I wanted to add my tuppence about Chris Smalling.

There has been a buzz about Smalling since we snatched him from Middlesbrough.  I can’t remember the details, but Smalling, a Maidstone Utd player, seemed to have signed up with Boro, only to have something change at the last minute.  And he came to us.

Since then we’ve seen him rise from the reserves to the bench to occasional first team outings.  This seems entirely appropriate to me.  He’s a good prospect so you want him to experience first team action, but his talent is not so prodigous that he demands inclusion at such a young age.   This is no disgrace:  you can count on not many hands the players who make young debuts and keep on playing at a high level from then on.  I have a terrible memory these days, but only Wayne Rooney and James Milner spring immediately to mind of the current crop of England’s finest.  Michael Owen, Steven Gerrard, Joe Cole, there are more, but they are the exceptions that confuse things.

Which brings me to another point.  Brian always used to say that defending is like baking, where the recipe and measurements are crucial, whereas attacking is like desserts, where some improvisation and creativity goes a long way.  I have presumably butchered the analogy, but generally speaking it seems as though forwards, for whatever reason, are ‘ready’ younger.  Defenders take time to learn the concentration and anticipation required to do the job.

So for Smalling I think any criticism of what he does now is probably on the harsh side.  It’s almost inconceivable that he wouldn’t need to improve.  He’s nearly 20, which should mean that (plucking numbers from thin air) he has at least 2-3 years of bedding in to do and probably another 3-4 after that before he peaks.

And frankly he could become anything.   For all Roy’s positive traits we don’t know what he’s like bringing on youngsters (he seems to trust older players, which if anything is a tick in Smalling’s favour:  Roy has made exceptions for him where he has not for others in the past).   But good young players frequently fail to become good older players.  Bad young players become good older players.  Anything can happen.   At this point success isn’t defined as “England regular” (which sounds daft but sometimes our players seem to be judged against perfection), it’s a steady progress, building on the obvious promise to become a player good enough to play regularly at the top level.   The signs are good, very good, but there’s a long way to go.    What is nice is having such a well thought of player at Fulham.   It gives us someone to root for (somehow it’s easy to warm to a young player making his way in the game; perhaps it reminds us of when we were young with our future ahead of us?), and perhaps symbolises the strides the club has made under Roy, Alastair Mackintosh and the rest of the powers that be.

American news

Our thoughts go out to Charlie Davies and his family today.   Graham Fox, covering for Bruce, writes this at DuNord.

Some talent.  Here’s hoping he can play again.

In other news, Clint missed the USA game following his tumble at West Ham the other day.

I had a look at the Yanks Abroad site and found that a lot of the commenters were pleased he missed out.  It only seems like yesterday that Clint was playing outstandingly well in the Confederations Cup.    How about that, eh?  Is this typical of how he’s perceived by fans?  Is this another case of not appreciating what you’ve got until it’s gone?

I don’t believe it!

Last night I watched part of a terrific documentary about Alain Robert, the French Spiderman.  Robert, a short, muscly man with receding but devil-may-care long hair, climbs tall buildings without safety equipment.  I couldn’t walk up the stairs of some of these buildings;  Robert climbs them from the outside.

Madness, but strangely life affirming.  We may squander life’s precious gifts on ridiculous office jobs, but some people are giving it a proper go.   Robert said as much at the end.   He doesn’t want to lie on his death bed with regrets.

At 945 this morning I got involved in a brief coffee room controversy.  Mine is a glass one that once had Juventus decorations on it (a present from Hade’s mum following a trip to Rome), but now is just plain glass.   For reasons that perplex me, my mug often gets used by others as a dirty spoon holder.  There are 30 odd mugs in the cupboard – why me?  Anyway, today I went in to get my mug, and again, there it was on the draining board with four or five spoons and some tinted water inside.  I made a jovial tutting reference to Graham from marketing and tipped the spoons into the sink, where they lay happily in the remains of someone’s breakfast cereal.  I washed up my mug, poured in a Capri-Sun and two soluble aspirins, and headed back to my desk.

Not so fast.  Someone from another team (I don’t know his name) stopped me.  “Sorry mate, but next time can you replace the glass.  Put the spoons in a new glass.  It’s there for a reason.”  I blinked, disbelieving.  “But my mug has been wronged here.  Never mind the spoons.  They’re not clean in there anyway.”  Then followed an Islington standoff, before we parted, me with one of those John McEnroe smirks and him (presumably) with the good feeling that comes of correcting someone else’s wayward behaviour.

At 10am I had a 15 minute meeting on quality procedures.   It involves such things as the data protection act, data security, that sort of thing.  It went on for an hour.  This is important stuff, I have no doubt, but as I sat there on the second floor I imagined Alain Robert climbing past us on the way to the roof, from where he would metaphorically piss on everyone inside by his very act of being.

I took all this philosophically, had another capri-sun, and got on with the day.  But sometimes you do wonder why you bother.

Then I got home.  Hade was 3/4 of the way through a home-made steak and ale (good ale, too) pie, had stocked up on Mr Kipling cakes, and was prepared to listen to my ranting.  The pie was delicious, the rest of the ale went down well, and the cake rocked too.   Then Holby City came on, so I came in here and switched on Planet Rock, ready to hear Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the free world”, which furthered my sense of well-being.

So life is generally good, probably.   All of which was supposed to be a lead in to this story about former Ipswich goalkeeper Shane Supple, who gave up (partly) because he didn’t think his teammates cared.

I also wanted to mention Michael Henderson’s “50 men who ruined football”, which so far has a 5 star review and a 1 star review on Amazon.  It’s contrary and contentious but thrillingly good.  Being something of an old git at heart I’m with him all the way on this one.  Cracking book.   I just wish it could have been 100, all the more to read through.  Oh well.  Enjoy what we do have rather than worry about what we haven’t, eh?  We can’t all climb buildings with reckless abandon, my mug may never be victimised again, we do need to ensure that our clients’ data is secure, and while there are good books and good music and understanding partners who make wicked pies there’s not much to grumble about really.   Keep on rockin’ in the free world…..

Technology fun

The future of sport watching?  Certainly it worked quite well today.   I happened to have 25p in a Bet365 account, which gave me free access to the stream.  No problems at all.  I would assume Bet365 were happy too – while getting bored of the game I had plenty of time to play with the bells and whistles on their site, and ended up with a nice sounding double on Barcelona and Inter Milan to win their respective leagues (a £10 bet that would return me my stake and £12 or so, which seems fair).  So Bet365 probably got a fair bit of money through the tills during the game.

I am sure there are plenty of reasons why this won’t happen for domestic games, but at some point things have to change.  The free streams are a means to an end, but are generally unwatchable and frustrating.   It would be great to be able to watch away games online via somewhere like Bet365.  I would happily pay for the privilege.   We’ll see what happens, but I’m sure times are changing.

Meanwhile, in other technology fun, we turn to Twitter, which I don’t know how to drive but enjoy reading:

Jozy Altidore:

Hmmm.

And this from Darren Bent, which cracked me up:

Lol, as they say.

11: the magic number. Being Alan Wiley, and Clint Dempsey’s Confederation Cup

Forgot to post this the other day, but The Times has a nice look at Alan Wiley’s work in the Man Utd v Sunderland game (when Fergie dissed his fitness).

They have a nice graphic, but the long and the short of it is that he ran about 11k and was on average 18 metres from the ball and 16 metres from fouls.    He made 17 sprints (this doesn’t seem like much does it?) and covered 740 metres at “high intensity”.   Good stuff.

Speaking of which, today I was pointed towards the Castrol Index, the stats… sponsor?… of the confederations cup.   This index is done by the same people who do the Times Fink Tank, and they had our man Dempsey as the second best player in the tournament (Lucio of Brazil was #1).   Anyway, the reason these two stories are in one blog post is this:

Look!   Clint ran 11k a game too.   Pretty consistently.  We’re well into the realms of useless information now, I grant you, but still.   It’s nice to know these things.

They also have high tech heatmap graphics.  Here’s Clint v Spain:

One day someone will buy me ProZone…

My latest Times effort: Diomansy Kamara and dogs

Here.   (It has clearly been ‘edited’ by someone who believes in short paragraphs..)

Academic news: intransitive triplets

Interesting link from reader Dan Loughlin.

Their approach is to think of a soccer game as an experiment to determine which of two teams is the best. The question then is this: What is the probability that the outcome of the experiment truly represents the relative abilities of the two teams? And the answer, unfortunately, is: not very probable.

They’ve carried out a statistical analysis of soccer scores in various types of competition and found them wanting as a way to determine, with a reasonable degree of certainty, the best team. “For typical scores, the probability of a misleading result is significant,” they say.

One way to increase the statistical significance of a result is to repeat the experiment. This, say Skinner and Freeman, is essentially what happens in tournaments that are organized so that the fate of a team does not rest solely on the result of one match. For example, in the last World Cup, teams were organized into mini-leagues, which should produce a more reliable result. Unfortunately, the winning teams then go into a series of knockout rounds, which are notoriously poor experiments.

In fact, Skinner and Freeman carried out an extensive statistical analysis of the scores at the last World Cup. They point out that if the outcomes of games were a true reflection of the teams’ abilities, then the situation “Team A beats Team B beats Team C, which beats Team A” should never occur. They call this an intransitive triplet.

And yet these paradoxical results occur all the time. In the 2006 World Cup, there were 355 triplets of which 17 percent were intransitive. That may not sound like much, but consider this: If the results were entirely random, you’d expect only 25 percent of the triplets to be intransitive. Is it really possible that the outcome of the World Cup is little better than random?

I appreciate that the proportion of readers who are remotely interested in this is relatively low, but I think it’s important.  Cut through the guff (e.g. don’t take it too literally!) and the point they make is a good one.  One only has to look at our results against Man Utd last year to see how things can go wacky, or if you want a triplet just look at what we did against Arsenal or Hull.    It’s one of the reasons I am so placid after games.   Sh1t can happen in one match.  It’s when it keeps happening that you have to worry, and so far, under Hodgson, we’ve never had more than a month or so of wobbling.

If anyone has the means to access the full article that would be very good.   And remember, if you see any good links, pass ‘em on.