Notice the eccentric and loveable Louis Nicollin (aka Loulou) – Montpellier president – sporting a new barnet, bottom right.

“It was a dark and stormy night” – as Craven Cottage’s own Edward Bulwer-Lytton might have put it. Despite Montpellier needing only a point against already relegated Auxerre to win Ligue 1 there was still a feeling that it would never be that simple, as indeed was the case.

The first drama came twenty minutes in – Oliver Kapo puts Auxerre 1-0 up against Montpellier. The balance of le championnat swings so unexpectedly in the direction of Paris.

Then, not ten minutes after the Auxerre goal PSG go a goal down to Lorient. Almost immediately following this deserved Lorient lead, record signing Javier Pastore misses two golden opportunities to equalise. This is too much to bear for the travelling Parisiens, who force the game to be stopped briefly as the flares rain down.

While PSG were forced to contemplate how they’d wasted a chance to go top when John Utaka – yes, John Utaka of Pompey fame – equalises for Montpellier. Game on Montpellier.

PSG then begin their comeback. In quarter of an hour Pastore and Motta put PSG in the lead. Could two Qatari signings save PSG’s season?

Fans angry at Auxerre’s disappointing season (but were nevertheless impressive this evening) give us our second major delay of the evening, again, after flares are thrown on the pitch. This time for almost half an hour. The local authority dictated that riot police must evacuate the aggrieved stand before play can continue. During this time we see the PSG team huddled around a television waiting to see if Auxerre might be able to win the title for them.

As it stands, of course, at 1-1, Montpellier are still set to win the title. But they have plenty of time to reflect on the fact that if they slip up – the title goes to Paris. So close, yet so far from achieving one of the most remarkable stories in European football. How will this delay affect them?

Shortly after play restarts Montpellier star (and Les Bleus star this summer?) Oliver Giroud almost puts Montpellier in the lead with a blistering shot that Sorin is good to get his fingers to. Both Giroud and Paris’s Nene are on 21 goals. How sweet a title-winning goal that gives him the golden boot?

In fact it takes 6 minutes following the crowd trouble before John Utaka – yes, again, John Utaka of Pompey fame – scores his second on the night to win a historic first title for Montpellier Hérault Sport Club.

…

“It was like Fulham won the Premier League”

This was the outcome that French football fans wanted. This is everything that is wonderful about French football. Montpellier had spent a fraction of newly wealthy PSG – €2 million and €160 million, respectively. People had expected Montpellier to struggle after losing some of their better players. At the start of the season they were 109 to 1 to win the title.

This made Montpellier’s title win more poignant in some respects. It is true that France is in desperate need of a force in Europe – Ligue 1 has just dropped out of the big five leagues in Europe – but it feels like an end of an era in which anyone might win. Even given Olympique Lyonnais’s seven season run of titles, Ligue 1 has had more winners in the modern era (i.e. the Sky Sports era – forgive me!) and Montpellier’s win has given us a fifth winner in five seasons. Does a Paris dominant in Europe come at the expense of losing some of Ligue 1′s magic?

Dominic Conquest is a Norfolk bor and Fulham fan since 2007/08 (the glory Sanchez days) after moving to London. Francophile and reluctant Parisien.

Filed under: General

The 2011/12 Season Review DVD is now available for pre-order. Be one of the first to view the 2011/12 season's ups and downs with your very own collectable DVD.

Academy Director Huw Jennings discusses the U19s' participation in the Alstatten International Tournament which took place in Switzerland at the weekend and saw Fulham reach the Final, only to lose 5-4 on penalties.

2011/12 Season Ticket Holders yet to secure their seats for next season have until 9am Tuesday 22nd May before seats are released on General Sale. Prices from £399 adults and £95 juniors. Find out more at fulhamfc.com/seasontickets.

Since suffering a cruciate ligament injury back in November, Zdenek Grygera has worked relentlessly in a bid to get back to fitness and the end is now in sight for the defender as he prepares to start running again for the first time in six months.

A visit to London is not complete without a trip to Craven Cottage, the home of Fulham Football Club. Explore the Club's unique 19th century ground on a tour that will take you past the Michael Jackson statue, along the riverside and into Chairman Mohamed Al Fayed's box.

******.

Anyway, Chelsea are victorious after dodging a thousand Barcelona and Bayern Munich shots and springing the odd random goal JUST when it was needed. Assuming that Roman Abramovich hasn’t bought his way into God’s great control booth in the sky, this is good old fashioned luck and good old fashioned defending. I confess that last night’s performance was quite enjoyable in John Terry’s absence – I’m a huge Ashley Cole fan and Gary Cahill’s performance had much to admire in it. Juan Mata seems like a good chap and I’m even warming more to Didier Drogba as the years go by. It was fun football in the end, even if the result was (more or less) a travesty (again, and that again is the crucial thing really isn’t it? Can’t be a fluke if they can do this to order), you can’t fault the drama.

This is arguably the worst side in Abramovich’s time, which is perhaps why they won. Abandoning any notions of fighting toe-to-toe, Chelsea left few gaps to exploit, and remain defensively strong enough to repel a lot of what even the best teams can throw their way.  You need something about you to win this trophy and pretty much everything went right, most notably that Barca and Real Madrid fought out a classico just before the semis, but Chelsea did their bit and are in some senses worthy winners (less so in other senses).

Bayern didn’t help themselves always – I read that Arjen Robben had 23 shots, which is more than most teams come up with in 90 minutes and somewhat shows his playground ball-hogging in its worst light.  Yeah he’s a great player, but sometimes he seems to take things that bit too far.

It’s a very fine Bayern side and I’m sad that they weren’t able to win – that’s two defeats against defensive teams in three years now. Such is football, of course.

Richard Allen founded this website in 2006. This is him at a wedding last year.

Filed under: General

Don't miss out on our End of Season Sale, with products across all of our ranges now at incredibly low prices both online and instore.

The latest instalment of Tweets Of The Week celebrates the U18s' fantastic Premier Academy League win as the boys show off their well-earned trophy.

Aaron Hughes was full of praise for his side after Fulham secured yet another top-half finish in the Barclays Premier League and the defender also acknowledged the contributions of the younger members of the Whites squad.

Oranje is het nieuwe zwart. 06-06-12.

Unrenewed 2011/12 Season Ticket Holders' exclusive access to released seats ends soon. From 9am on Tuesday 22nd May, 2012/13 Season Tickets will be made available on General Sale. Prices start from just £399 adults and £95 juniors. Find out more at fulhamfc.com/seasontickets.

Fulham confirmed yesterday afternoon that Mahamadou Diarra had signed a one-year contract with the club, extending his stay at Craven Cottage until next summer.

The Mali midfielder, who joined on a short-term deal as a free agent in January, impressed Martin Jol with some powerful performances towards the end of the campaign as he built up his match sharpness. He became a regular in the first-team having initially been used as a substitute and formed a fine partnership with Danny Murphy in midfield. The 30 year-old made eleven appearances, scoring in the 3-0 win over Bolton in April.

The former Real Madrid and Monaco midfielder has taken up the option of extending his contract until 2013 under the terms of the initial deal which brought him to Fulham.

I don’t care if there’s no ‘end product’. I’ve honestly never seen a footballer who’s as fun to watch as Mousa Dembele.

We sit in what I used to think of as “Paintil Corner”, the area of the Riverside where John Paintsil was most active when defending the Hammersmith End.  The thing with being that close to the action is that you lose a lot of perspective, but you do grow to appreciate the speed and nimbleness of top level football. Everything is bang-bang-bang, and the gifted players alone are able to come up with constructive solutions to messy problems.

Danny Murphy can do that thing where the ball rolls across his body. Bryan Ruiz has Chris Waddle’s ability to glide beyond a hypnotised defender on the back of no obvious deception. Dembele is extraoardinary. He reminds me of Barry Sanders or one of those great American Football running backs, his balance and acceleration being such that he’s working to different rules to everyone else. And up close you really get to see how impressive this is. He’s quick, but he’s strong and decisive as well. It’s brilliant to see him receive the ball, shift it in that da-de-da-de-gone! way of his: The Hammersmith Quickstep, gone in half a second.

He couldn’t be more different to Clint Dempsey, not least in their attitudes to goals. Dempsey’s best when he’s arriving and hitting the ball first time; Dembele almost sees it as his duty to take a few touches (and earlier in the year this was frustrating people). Outside of tackling (which we know he’s good at) I honestly can’t remember him doing anything ‘out of control’, at least not in the getting your shorts dirty sense. So while Dempsey will crash the area on the off chance, Dembele lurks, sits back, waiting to do things on his own terms. Dempsey thrives because he’s better able to interpret chaos than others; Dembele’s is a more orderly form of genius. It’s part of why they’ve become such terrific team-mates.

Fulham have cobbled together an attacking unit that can beat you in a number of ways. It’s a work in progress and still needs pace somewhere (can we have Valencia, Sir Alex?) but the parts in this machine are about as good as we can hope for. Losing Dembele and Dempsey in one summer would be a huge shame. I don’t doubt that we could replace them to the extent that we could finish top 10 again, but these two are unusual, and were the league not so very competitive, could easily lead Fulham to something strange.

It won’t happen, but I hope both go to clubs where they’ll play regularly and have a chance to thrive. Dempsey feels perhaps a year late on this; Dembele perhaps a year early, but both will command big money. We’re not going to say no, I don’t imagine.

Richard Allen founded Craven Cottage Newsround in 2006. This is him at a wedding last year.

Filed under: General

We want your help as we compile the ultimate list of Great Fulham Goals! From Sylvain Legwinski's ferocious effort against Newcastle, to Luis Boa Morte's derby day winner versus Chelsea, we'd like your input as to your favourite strikes from the last 11 years, via our official Facebook page and Twitter feed.

The Club can confirm that midfielder Mahamadou Diarra will remain at Fulham FC until the summer of 2013.

You can still take advantage of the great discounts in the Club's End of Season Sale, available both online and instore.

2011/12 Season Ticket Holders who have not renewed have exclusive access to 2012/13 Season Tickets (including released seats) until 9am, Tuesday 22nd May. You can even purchase additional Season Tickets for friends and family in this exclusive window.

We have reached that part of the season were Fulham will be linked to every single player in the country whether true or not. But this story is an interesting one because I am not aware of Fulham being interested in Jodan Rhodes before. The 22 year-old has been linked to number of clubs over the past year and with his outstanding goal scoring record this year it isn’t hard to see why! He has scored a total of 40 goals this season for his League One side Huddersfield and, according to the Mirror,  is set to join Fulham on a 3.5m deal after the League One play-off next week. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jol was to target a new striker this summer and Rhodes certainly fits the bill considering the guy is just 22. Itis whether he can make the transition from League One to PL. This video shows all of his goals in a 6-0 demolishion of Wycombe earlier this season. The pundits there give him alot of praise so have a watch!

Jordan Rhodes v Wycombe

Fulham U18s Manager Kit Symons praises the individual development shown throughout his squad this season and looks ahead to the latest tournament the Academy are competing in before enjoying a well-earned summer break.