Someone who thinks he should be playing for someone better than Fulham
The Boxing Day fixture this year is away at Fulham and was
put in jeopardy by a very predictable strike by London Transport. Fair play to Fulham for declaring that they
would carry on regardless which is the same attitude they had when they got
universal condemnation for wanting to put up a statue of Michael Jackson. I know that I mentioned that in the report on
the game at SMS but I make no apology for mentioning again, something that I
really can’t believe.
It’s been an odd season for Fulham so far – thy lost some
influential players int he summer in Dembele, Dempsey and Murphy but didn’t
initially seem to be too affected by it and had some decent results. A gradual slide down the league has happened
though and they will be beginning to cast glances over their shoulder should
they lose a couple more.... one of which would hopefully be today. They still have some decent players left
though in Schwarzer, Hangeland and of course, Dimitar Berbatov who also carries
with him, the deserved reputation of being an arrogant twt. Also in the ranks are non-footballer Steve
Sidwell and ex-Saints Chris Baird who has been reinvented as a defensive
midfielder since he left us, post Whisky George’s playoff losing promotion bid
in 2007. They also have Phillippe
Senderos who is one of those strange anomalies you sometimes get in
football. I’ve seen better centre halves
playing against us in League 1 than this clown but somehow, he’s forged a
career playing in the Premier League and I don’t know how – he must have a
really good agent or be on about £3.50 a week.
Nigel made just the one change to our starting line up with
Steven Davis coming into the side in place of Mayuka which presumably means
that Gaston will be stuck out on the wing again and you are immediately
wondering who is going to get up to support Sir Rickie up front. The Steeeeve bench experiment has been
abandoned and so James Ward-Prowse is back, alongside the usual suspects such
as Big Jos, Guly, J-Rod, Mayuka and Frazer.
We start off badly as Fulham burst down our left as Punch
and Cork
conspire to give the ball away and give Rodallega a run. He
gets free of any Clyne shaped interference and slides it across the top
of the penalty area to Sidwell who is confused by the need to kick the ball
rather than an opponent and fires just wide when he really should have hit the
target.
We survive another 5 minutes before Reither bombs down our
left behind Shaw who has no cover from anyone as Gaston has just let the
fullback run. The cross is hard and low
across the six yard line and somewhere in London, a lumberjack chops down a
tree and shouts ‘TIMBERRRR’ which is Kelvin’s cue to fall over in instalments
in the general direction of the ball.
The falling tree can only flap the ball straight to Berbatov who isn’t
going to miss from there. 1-0 and the scorer
whips off his shirt to display the slogan ‘Keep Calm and Pass Me the Ball’. It was obviously more important for the
arrogant twat to do this than to worry about playing 82 minutes on a yellow
card. Still, Superkelv will know not to
pass him the ball now.
We are crap, no two ways about it and
Kacinunpronounceablename gets away down the left and crosses to Berbatov who
arrogantly heads wide when he really should have worked the goalkeeper. Finally we do something up the other end but
it needs a wayward pass from Mr.Arrogant to set Gaston away and he gets into
the box before being crowded out (with the help of an oafish shove from
Senderos) but the loose ball finds its way to Corky so you know he’s not going
to score but he does at least force Schwarzer into a save.
The next action involves Punch who receives a ball out on
the right wing and lays it off. You’ve
got time to go and fill a bath by repeatedly boiling a kettle by the time Berbatov
arrogantly slides in and carts Punch up in the air. It’s a yellow card tackle all day long and
bye bye Berbatov, no one can pass you the ball because you’ve been sent off you
arrogant prick. Oh right, not even a
word from the ref. Back in the day when
a player was on a yellow card, in the event of another foul by the same player,
referees used to be able to weigh both incidents up and decide whether the two
offences warranted a dismissal. The
booking rule was clarified however so that bookable offences should be
considered in isolation but there’s obviously a caveat along the lines of
“unless the first booking was for a celebration or it was given to a Billy Big
Bollocks player”. The arrogant twat
should have walked, simple as that.
The last ten minutes see Saints putting Fulham under
pressure without looking like scoring with Morgan dragging a shot wide and we
had a spot of pinball in the Fulham box which was caused by Jack Cork burgling
Riise who was trying to let a ball run out of play. I can’t believe any Fulham player doesn’t
watch his back with Michael Jackson in close proximity. A couple of driving runs from Luke Shaw
cause some consternation to the Fulham defence who are confused because he
isn’t playing for Arsenal and as the rain came down, it was half time.
We started the second half in positive fashion and had the
first shot as Punch came in off of the left wing and drilled just wide of the
far post with Schwarzer not interested.
Punch and Gaston are swapping wings well and are getting space and
Gaston’s chipped pass is just too far ahead of Sir Rickie who has totally lost
the lumbering Senderos. There is always
the scope for calamity though and Luke Shaw makes what I think is his first
ever mistake by allowing a harmless looking crossfield ball to go under his
foot to Dejagar who with no composure whatsoever, cuts in and shoots and comes
within two yards of giving away a throw in on the far side.
We simply do not look like scoring and Nigel simply does not
look like making an attacking change to the team. Punch gets carted up in the air by Riise
which earns fatty a booking and we have a head in hands moment as Shaw gets
down the wing and crosses, Jose flicks on and Sir Rickie smashes in a volley
with his left foot which flies about a yard over the bar. With 15 to go, finally a change as Steven
Davis makes way for J-Rod. The Rod goes
to a kind of left wing position and Gaston is freed to go and play up front
with Sir Rickie.
A chain of events are then kicked off by the fact that
Senderos is complete shite. First of all
he balloons a free header up in the air when he uses the corner of his head
instead of the front. This kicks off a
bit of pinball from which Punch wins a corner.
Gaston’s corner from the left is knocked away by a flailing arm
belonging to Chris Baird and we are gifted a penalty. Sir Rickie has hardly kicked a ball in the
right direction in the previous 85 minutes but we need him to do so now...
bang, Schwarzer gets something on it (and we all shit ourselves) and it
ricochets up into the roof of the net for 1-1.
Personally I’ll take a point at this juncture but Saints are
up for it and The Great Gaston is back as he turns past Riise and nutmegs Sidwell
before hammering in a left blast from miles out which Schwarzer parries up in
the air and manages to grab before it crosses the line. There are no cameras angles available to
conclusively prove whether it went in or not but I suspect that it didn’t.
It wouldn’t be Saints though without allowing Fulham the
chance to undo all our hard work as a routine ball up to Berbatov causes panic
and falling over in our defence and the ball breaks to Sidwell how imagines
it’s someone’s head and volleys a screamer just wide. To be fair and much though I don’t like him,
it’s a brilliant effort. Then it’s the
referee’s turn as Clyne breathes on Frei who flops to the ground allowing Fat
Boy Riise to fire in a free kick which Hangeland meets and heads comfortably-ish
wide.
93 and a half minutes on the clock and it’s now safe to
bring Guly on and no sooner than Gaston departs then it’s full time and we got
the rarest of things, an away point and to be honest, I’m quite happy with that
and we deserved it. Having said that, I
thought we were pretty dire up until about 20 minutes to go when we went for it
a bit more and put Fulham under pressure.
Good players make mistakes under pressure and so does Phillippe
Senderos. Our improvement more or less
coincided with moving Gaston back into his best role just behind the
striker. The defence again stood up well
to what was thrown at them with both centre backs outstanding and once more,
Morgan and Corky did what needed to be done defensively in midfield. Steven Davis was a bit of a mystery to me and
didn’t seem to add much at all to the proceedings while up front, Sir Rickie
had a shocker but was horribly isolated and Gaston and Punch flitted in and out
until the last 20 when they really came to the fore. Behind all this, the goalkeeping issue has
risen it’s ugly head again and with Stoke away being our next game, I think
it’s time for Artur Boruc to be given a run of games. It wasn’t just the goal today (though that
was diabolical), it was the general ‘nailed to the goal line’ approach.
Martin Jol gave one of his superb press interviews
afterwards where his voice goes so deep that it drops out of range for most
people. Before he dropped out, he said
something about being like a thunderstorm which I assume is some sort of
reference about being loud and wet. He
was quite honest in his assessment of the game though and I can’t imagine Chris
Baird is going to have a fun time in training the next time they are in.
We should be extremely grateful for the Hand of Baird as
until that point, it was really looking like one of those games where we could
still be playing now and not have scored.
The intention today was obviously to win the midfield battle and keep
Fulham quiet but with Superkelv having his arthritis moment so early on, we
really needed to be creating much more than we actually did, bearing in mind
that Fulham were nothing special and there for the taking.
As mentioned earlier, next up we have Stoke away who are
turning into a very good side, especially at home where they haven’t lost for
nearly a year. Our players will know
that they have to be right on it for 100 minutes and tackle, head and block
absolutely anything that comes near them.
Like I said, I see Boruc starting and also feel that Jos Hooiveld will
come in but that would be more contentious given how well Jose and Maya are
playing at the moment. A point here
would be a major result but you know what, for some strange reason I fancy us for all three. Bring it on.
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