I imagine there will be people angry about this but City have won every single home game this year, right? So quite what we were supposed to do about that I’m not sure. People talk about our record at Eastlands but that was before City became CITY and, well, honestly…

The shame was that the game was over before it had begun, Adam Johnson managing to fall over Chris Baird in the area to win a dodgy penalty to make it 1-0, then Baird put through his own goal to make it two before we’d even started to play. From there it was really a question of how many, and it’s to the team’s credit (well, and the weather’s) that the second half was reasonable.  City got a late third but a 3-0 defeat to this team isn’t terrible.

Interesting team selection: Etuhu recalled post-window (he’d wanted out, but having stayed, was to be trusted again it seems), Davies, Dembele and Duff as a three behind Dempsey which meant no Ruiz but presumably more defensive solidity. Maybe. Schwarzer was back and Chris Baird was brought in to play left back (combat the inverted wing play of Johnson) and did moderately well after that start, but ultimately we were outclassed.

So in the end the story was the weather, which was snowy. The game’s out of the way now, let’s move on.

Rich made a comment in my previous post that got me thinking, “just how hard was our first half?”

Well, unfortunately, soccer is a bit behind on the sabermetrics such as SOS and RPI and Power Rankings or other crazy mathematic formulas/systems that determine, well, everything.

What we can figure out is our points haul from one half of the season to the other. And, after looking at the statistical breakdown, we’re definitely a second half team. Does that mean our schedules are easier in the second half? Impossible to tell.

But, sure makes you wish we had playoffs eh? (First 19 games on top, second 19 on bottom)

W D L F A Pts Place 2011-12 4 8 8 20 25 20 13 2 1 1 9 7 7 13 2010-11 3 10 6 19 23 19 18 8 6 5 30 20 30 8 2009-10 7 6 6 24 19 27 9 5 4 10 15 27 19 12 2008-09 6 8 5 18 14 26 9 8 3 8 21 20 27 7 2007-08 2 8 9 20 34 14 18 6 4 9 18 26 22 17 2006-07 6 6 7 18 28 24 12 2 9 8 20 32 15 16 2005-06 5 5 9 23 28 20 14 9 1 9 25 30 28 12 2004-05 5 3 11 20 32 18 15 7 5 7 32 28 26 13

As the stats bear out, only twice in the past 7 seasons did our points haul drop from the first to the second half: 2006-07 when the club, for all intents and purposes, collapsed; and 2009-10 when we had the likes of Juventus, Wolfsburg, Hamburg, and Atletico Madrid to worry about (read the sentence after the semi colon back without smiling. It’s impossible.)

Excluding those two seasons, the average point increase from the first half to the second is 7.2 (with them, it’s barely 3).

Things didn’t go as planned on Wednesday  but, if we win the remaining home games we *should* win, I don’t see how we don’t beat the 20 point haul from the first 19 games. By my count, we’ll have 25. And that’s not counting any away matches.

So, even though this club is schizophrenic with amazing highs (comeback versus Arsenal) and awful lows (see: 2011-12 Europa League Group Stages) I’m optimistic about the second half of the season. Even without a recognized forward for the foreseeable future, trying to reach that magic number of 20 (or, 40 overall; which should be more than enough to survive) is still something to watch for in the remaining games.

This is veeeeeery interesting:

This paper evaluates the extent to which the performance of English Premier League football club managers can be attributed to skill or luck when measured separately from the characteristics of the team. We first use a specification that models managerial skill as a fixed effect and we examine the relationship between the number of points earned in league matches and the club’s wage bill, transfer spending, and the extent to which they were hit by absent players through injuries, suspensions or unavailability. We next implement a bootstrapping approach to generate a simulated distribution of average points that could have taken place after the impact of the manager has been removed. The findings suggest that there are a considerable number of highly skilled managers but also several who perform below expectations. The paper proceeds to illustrate how the approach adopted could be used to determine the optimal time for a club to part company with its manager. We are able to identify in advance several managers who the analysis suggests could have been fired earlier and others whose sackings were hard to justify based on their performances.

Download the report here.

Key part:

Martin Jol – Tottenham Hotspur 2007/08 (See Figure 3)
Martin Jol was relieved of his duties as the manager of Tottenham on 25 October 2007 after 113 games in charge. Results from the bootstrapping model showing that Jol’s performance was not only improving, but that it was comparable to the best coaches in England. Only 18 randomised managers were better at the beginning of his tenure, and this had further enhanced to just 1% prior to his release. The model suggests that Jol should not have been sacked based on his performance. The previous season had seen Tottenham narrowly miss out on 4th position in the Premier League and a UEFA Champions League berth to local rivals Arsenal. This may have prompted the kneejerk sacking by the club’s board even though Arsenal’s budget and expectations were significantly higher than that of Tottenham.

David Preece on gay footballers.

Kevin Davies’ wife on the transfer window.

Zonal Marking on being good in the air.

Some players like lots of time and space, others can operate in crowds.

To play in central midfield you need to be at one end of what we’ll call the space-time continuum; if you are not at the right end you may struggle in that role. In that case you need to find somewhere else where you will get space and time.

Bryan Ruiz in particular seems to get a bit messed up in a crowd. He gives the ball away a lot when he drops deep, and frankly it’s dangerous for him and the team. He is at the wrong end of the space-time continuum to be playing in busy areas.

But when you move him up front something interesting happens. The defenders are one side of him for a start, rather than surrounding him. And often they drop off a little. Suddenly Bryan gets the opportunity to play.

Fine, you might say – all footballers would like time to play. Right, of course. But not all footballers have the wherewithall to take advantage of this space and time. So while Bryan is at the other end of the space-time continuum, really this continuum is not two dimensional because if it was you’d get this:

Happy in a crowd Not happy in a crowd

|—– Danny Murphy/Clint Dempsey/Mousa Dembele ————-Bryan Ruiz/Brede Hangeland/Aaron Hughes—-|

You need some kind of space-time continuum optimisation matrix:

Happy in a crowd/good in space

Murphy (then to a much lesser degree) Dempsey/Dembele

Happy in a crowd/bad in space

AJ?

Unhappy in a crowd/good in space

Ruiz

Unhappy in a crowd/bad in space

Defenders

We might try to plot the space-time continuum optimisation matrix later on.

Anyway, the point is, work out who can do what and put them in a position to succeed. In the right situations Bryan Ruiz is a genius; in the wrong ones he looks stupid. So…..

As London went Siberian (although not for me; watched at home while looking after the boy) Fulham were much as Fulham are.  Yes, we lacked a true number 25, but individual players are always less important than we think they’ll be. In truth we looked more or less okay.

Fulham lined up with what was more or less a 4-4-2, Murphy and Sidwell flanked by Duff and Davies, with Dempsey and Ruiz a surprising but skilful front two. They grew into the game and by the end of it we glimpsed an intriguing future, all skill and happiness. The Fulham goal was a peach, Ruiz reversing a delicious pass into Dempsey’s path, Dempsey spinning and thrashing the ball past Ben Foster for another goal (once more hit first time; he may be the greatest ever first time goalscorer). Dempsey – who seems like a nice chap – made sure he pointed at Ruiz in the celebrations.

Fulham had the ball almost all game, but were occasionally troubled by Albion’s counter attacks.  This eventually led to our undoing, a through ball saw our back four bypassed a bit too easily and the shot slammed past Stockdale for an ‘oh dear’ equaliser.  Really the game should have finished 2/3-0 given Fulham’s dominance, but still we have issues with creating space in the attacking third, so chances remain scarce and snatched.

That’s that then. A comfortable 1-1 draw full of neat passing and not quite enough end product.

Hmm, lets get this over with.

His first goal:

 

My favorite:

Best season:

http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/4678124/bobby_zamora_09_10_fulham.swf Bobby Zamora 09/10 Fulham. Watch more top selected videos about: Fulham F.C.

His funniest (scroll to :45 second mark)

http://www.fulhamfc.premiumtv.co.uk/articles/20090815/portsmouth-0-1-fulham_2269935_1811058

His finale:

 

So says Duncan Castles on Twitter.

In which case:

• why have Fulham sold an important player to a rival?
• why is there no obvious replacement in place, even though we are not safe from relegation?
• why did we only receive £4-6m for a player who is in or around the England squad?
• how does Fulham FC benefit from making the move now rather than in the summer?

Off to bed.

 

After an non-intensive manhunt that began in September 2010, reports are coming out of Motspur Park that Rafik Halliche has been found.

Former Fulham midfielder Julian Gray found Halliche in the same spot where he hid for two seasons: sitting in the Riverside Stand.

“None of the Fulham fans or staff ever go near the Riverside Stand, so when I heard about Fulham’s small reward to help find the ‘fella, I knew where he’d be,” Gray said. “I know what it’s like to go missing for so long.”

When asked about Halliche’s finding and his future with the club, Martin Jol said, “Huh? Might want to ask Sparky about him. Never heard of him.”

Reports from Craven Cottage are suggesting that Fulham have sold QPR a player who “never existed in the first place.”

The extraordinary claims come on the back of Bobby Zamora’s mooted £5 million move from Fulham to QPR.

A source from the West Ham grounds staff revealed today that “Bobby Zamora gave up football a long time ago. I don’t know where he went but it caused problems because West Ham had agreed to sell him to Fulham. What happened after that I couldn’t tell you, but that wasn’t the real Bobby Zamora you saw.”

“That’s what they’re saying is it?” asked Roy Hodgson, questioned today on his way out of the WBA training ground. “As far as I’m concerned a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind horse. I’ve already said too much now. Kapisch?” Hodgson disappeared down the road without looking back, jumping a red light while repeatedly honking his Volvo’s horn.

So who was Bobby Zamora? Fulham’s then reserve kit man was able to confirm that Zamora did indeed have his own changing room at the club’s Motspur Park training ground. And we can reveal that the club has kept a makeup expert on retainer since 2008. Was Bobby Zamora played by actors?

Extensive digging suggests that something like the following may have transpired: in 2008-09 Fulham hired Emile Heskey, then struggling for form with Wigan, to play the part of ‘Zamora’. This he did with relative ease, and established himself as a fine hold-up player who might sometimes struggle for goals. Heskey was retained for 2009-10 but Fulham received a stroke of luck when Zlatan Ibrahimovic, then failing to make an impact at Barcelona, was made available in September 2009. Ibrahimovic wasn’t free for all games, and Fulham relied on Heskey increasingly in league matches, but the deal was considered a success as Fulham reached the Europa League Final in Hamburg. Sadly for the club Ibrahimovic was not prepared to travel to Germany for the final, so Heskey deputised, and while he played quite well, the drop off was telling and too much for the West London club to bear. They lost 2-1.

After that both players withdrew their support for the scheme (Heskey because he was ‘tired of being messed around’, Ibra because of a move to Milan). Under Mark Hughes ‘Zamora’ was occasionally and successfully played by Roque Santa Cruz, but this scheme backfired when Santa Cruz was injured playing swingball with his cousin at a Wandsworth garden party. His absence put huge pressure on the club.

So why did this happen? It’s thought that Hodgson was given no choice in the matter, with Mohammed al Fayed reluctant to lose face in the football world. In time he came to appreciate the flexibility of the arrangement. Mark Hughes an easy convert: “this happens everywhere in football. You did it at City and Blackburn, right?” He went along with it, although it is thought that he was less than impressed with David Elm, Hodgson’s intended ‘Zamora’ stand in. Martin Jol has declined to comment on the situation but it is thought that he has been using Pierre van Hoijdonk to play ‘Zamora’ in recent times, a situation that sources close to Jol claim is ‘not ideal’.  Indeed, Jol has been trying to rid the club of it’s Zamora problem since he arrived, only to face opposition from al Fayed.  Fayed was finally convinced to cash in when van Hooijdonk was caught mooning at Michael Jackson’s statue after the team’s win over Newcastle.

Fulham have stunned both Footballing Worlds by signing American Football player Tim Tebow on a free transfer.

“After being healed from my rib, lung and chest injuries suffered during the defeat to the Patriots earlier this month, I had a calling from God that I should try my hand at another sport this off-season,” Tebow said. “I have chosen soccer because of the new challenges and cultures it brings. And I am less likely to suffer additional spine and neck injuries.”

Tebow will reportedly wear the John 3:16 eye black that he sported in college, as the Barclays Premier League has no regulations against its use, unlike the NFL and, recently, the NCAA.

Fulham Manager Martin Jol was coy about Tebow’s signing, saying “I don’t know what technical skills he can bring to this side, but he has one intangible with him: the power of God. And right now I need that.”

Additional unconfirmed reports coming out of Motspur Park state that Alistair Mackintosh and Mohammed Al-Fayed were so impressed with Tebow’s character they are considering turning the visiting locker-room at Craven Cottage into a Chapel.

Martin Jol has stunned the footballing world by dramatically selling himself to Aston Villa.

“To be honest I expected more from Fulham. It’s a small club,” he explained while screwing up his nose and sniffing. “And I wanted to be at a big club. You know? With big things.”

Jol continued: “I had seen what happened to Mark Hughes after he walked out on Fulham. QPR! Not for me. I wanted another job straight away. So I used the Bobby Zamora situation to make it work for me.”

What exactly happened next is not clear, but a Villa source close to the situation notes that they thought they had signed Zamora for £5 million on a four year deal worth £60,000 per week. The suspicion is that Jol used his connections in Holland to doctor the already signed contracts, substituting Jol’s name for Zamora’s. 

The Villa source observes that the job was “so professional we have virtually no chance of getting out of the deal. We don’t know what we’ll do with Martin but for now he’s ours.”

Fulham are expected to make a statement this morning.

Fulham manager Martin Jol has surprised everyone by exchanging all of his first team squad except Bryan Ruiz for Sheffield United’s 2011 FA Youth Cup runner-up team.

“At first we looked at the Man United squad. They were the winners of that tournament, after all, and I am not stupid. But we couldn’t get that deal done.  So I approached Sheffield United and the deal worked for both clubs. We expect to exchange the players via mini-bus this afternoon.”

Jol, whose remit is to keep Fulham in the Premier League while making the squad younger, privately feels that this deal makes this objective “virtually in the bag” and plans to take most of the rest of the season off. He will travel extensively throughout March, and is particularly looking forward to visiting Mexico.

A late hitch appeared when Sheffield United objected to Bjorn-Helge Riise’s inclusion in the deal – they’d had him before and found him annoying to have about the place – but both parties worked long into the night thrashing out a solution. Riise will be sent to Sheffield Wednesday on loan for the rest of the season.

More news as we get it.

Fulham are on the verge of signing 19 year old Argentine Alfonso Penne from Italian club Torino.  Penne, known as “The Fonz”, will be out of contract in the summer and is keen to test himself in the Premier League.

Penne rose to prominence last year as a 18 year old at Torino, scoring 47 goals in 15 U16 games for Il Granata as an over-aged player playing under a false passport.

“Yes, there were some questions, but the fact that he was so ruthless against such weak opposition is a major plus for us” said Martin Jol, who plans to use Penne as a floating forward for a couple of games before easing him into a substitute’s role, then banishing him to the reserves and forgetting about him.

Penne will undergo a medical at Motspur Park this afternoon and is likely to move for a nominal fee, rising to a substantial one subject to various milestones being met. It is thought that these milestones are quite realistic.

Just reading Simon Kuiper’s excellent “The Football Men“

You would never want Bergkamp playing for your life. To achieve his great moments he appears to enter a trance, shutting out the match. “People really have no idea what goes into the making of goals like that.”

The point being that Bergkamp is not consistent, drifting out of whole games at a time, but he can create moments of joy that nobody else could even imagine.   And those moments are what makes him (made him) special and, indeed, an occasional match-winner.

I don’t know how many games Bryan Ruiz has started for Fulham but it isn’t many.  He will get better, of course he will, but already we’ve seen enough to realise that we have the nearest thing to Bergkamp we’re ever to have in a white shirt.

That alone is enough for me.  If Bryan Ruiz ran around like a mad thing he’d presumably have a few more Fulham fans onside at the moment, but I’m inclined to think that just as Ruiz needs to learn to fit into the team, the team needs to learn how to get the best out of Ruiz – and the latter is probably more important than the former.

It’s been another ordinary season (has Hamburg ruined day-to-day Premier League existence?) and in five years time we probably won’t remember much about it. Bryan Ruiz’s two sensational moments will stick in our minds though.

 

 

 

 

The 2011-12 season ended last night. Okay, there’s still sixteen or so games left and a lot can happen.

But as a sporting competition, as a object of interest and fascination, last night’s impotent display and crashing out of our 3rd cup competition in as many months has us begging for this once-promising season to just end. Now. (Feels like being an Arsenal fan in March, no?)

As Rich wrote yesterday, it’s frankly impossible to guess what our future holds. We may get relegated. We may finish in the top 10. Neither of those two would surprise me. But, looking ahead to our now bullshit gap-filled schedule because of this bullshit cup competition taking bullshit precedence, our fixtures currently break down like so, home and away:

HOME:

1-Feb WBA
11-Feb Stoke
4-Mar Wolves
17-Mar Swansea
31-Mar Norwich
9-Apr Chelsea
21-Apr Wigan
5-May Sunderland

AWAY:
4-Feb Manchester City
25-Feb QPR
10-Mar Aston Villa
26-Mar Manchester United
7-Apr Bolton
14-Apr Liverpool
28-Apr Everton
13-May Tottenham

Okay, so, we may get no more than 2 points away for the rest of the season. Or, we’ll be lucky to have more goals scored than points. And I would say the same back in Hodgson’s heyday. Dear God that run is ridiculous.

But, thankfully, our home fixtures appear extremely manageable. The average position of those clubs is 12th, with two 19th and 20th respectively. And, like it’s always been, our home form will dictate where we finish this season. So if we can do what we’re supposed to do, i.e. beat newly promoted sides and relegation teams at home, we’ll be fine.

If we don’t, well, then, fuck. And knowing how this season goes…hmm, maybe there is still a spectacle to behold?

 

Bah. Just as the Odense fiasco represented more than just another defeat, so too did last night’s pathetic exit from the FA Cup. Nobody’s pretending it’s easy to go to Everton and get a result – if it was we’d manage to get points there once in a while – but there’s something horribly wrong about these disjointed farces. It’s great when the team’s firing on all cylinders – we look terrific – but there is no middle ground. We’re almost always either useless or terrific. Why?

Martin Jol’s transition is not going to happen any more quickly because we’re fed up with it, but at some point there has to be a recognisable plan in the team. What on earth were they doing last night? Clint Dempsey hardly touched the ball. Bryan Ruiz might as well not have been there. AJ responded to his target man role with predictable ineffectiveness (just how dim is this tactic? Long goal kicks aimed at AJ? Is he merely following orders?). These are our game changers – shouldn’t we have a way to make them effective? Or even get them on the ball?

Increasingly it seems harsh to blame the players. They operate within a framework outlined by the coaching staff, and remain thoroughly unable to find space in dangerous areas. We have players who can see and exploit space when it is there, we just never create it. How many good saves were required of Tim Howard last night? Our goal came from a penalty kick.

At the other end Everton poured forward and at one point secured 87 consecutive corner kicks. They battered us aerially and of course scored that way twice: Landon Donovan whipped in two crosses, the first headed in by Stracqualursi (easily beating the recalled Aaron Hughes), the second (in the second half) by the towering Fellaini, who had cleverly isolated himself on Stephen Kelly well beyond the far post. Both headers dropped into the net not particularly quickly, and for the first at least (I’m not picking on him, honest) Stockdale surely should have been more nimble in getting something on the ball.

But again, it’s the context of the defeat as much as the result that is so frustrating. The big clubs are knocking each other out of the competition and once more it seems likely that some unfancied club will have a good run. It should have been us last year – that home defeat against Bolton! – and could have been again this time around. Everton away was a horrible draw, but we still might have done more.

It isn’t about effort. With a small pitch filled by 22 highly trained atheletes the potential for stalemates in various areas is high. This is what we saw a good deal of, and at times our players did look a little short on pizzazz. Again, though, I don’t know that it has much to do with effort, more a general and dispiriting rudderlessness in which the players are somehow expected to rise above this bizarre fogginess that surrounds so much of what they are trying to do.

Put it this way: we’re playing WBA in the week. What do you expect from Fulham then? A 4-0 win? A 2-1 defeat? Frankly it is impossible to guess.

Wandering around Holborn this lunchtime I found myself in Waterstone’s and browsing the entire shop. I will be 36 tomorrow and had decided to treat myself to something.

Trouble was I didn’t know what. Looking over the fiction shelves was merely a reminder of how many books I already have but have not yet read. I could imagine the devil on my shoulder cackling down: “what, you think you’re going to live forever or something? You’ll never read what you’ve already got, and now you want more? Sheesh.” And in the end that devil won out.

We read fiction to both reinforce and extend our world view, I think. We are of a certain mindset, more or less, and look for authors who speak to that mindset, then give us something we haven’t already considered. Or put another way, we take their work and put ourselves into it.

So when I read Jim Dodge’s fantastic “Not Fade Away” again I know that I’m dealing with a writer who shares a lot of my own values, telling a story that I am going to enjoy listening to in a way I wouldn’t if it were written by someone I don’t like or agree with.  Philip Roth taps into my, ahem, hidden male and sees the world through that particular lense: it’s not me in those stories, but he’s taking a part of me and putting it into another universe, and it’s interesting to see how this plays out (in real life – if you’re in any way reasonable – you can’t do some of the things Roth’s characters do, but it’s a good window into what it might be like to try). John Updike’s Rabbit books are an excruciating portrait of a narcissistic twerp, but luckily for me I read them at my most narcissisticly twerpish phase and realised that it perhaps wasn’t just me who had it in him to be like this, gave myself a break and ended up back on a path that leads me to where things are now. John Updike really did change my life. Edward Abbey’s characters have similar beliefs to me, but while I think it’s a shame about the environment, they destroy building sites and blow up dams to make their point more forcefully. Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe is so well written as to again make me feel I could be him. So I read Marlowe and thrill to his ups and downs. It’s true: I wish I were him.

Reading – if you choose the right books – does this. There is a eurotrance band called Oceanlab who have a song that contains the line “and it feels like me, on a good day” (a phrase since copied/borrowed by a company selling anti-flatulence tablets, I think), and that’s about it, taking the character traits you value in yourself and stretching them into another character and another situation and playing the whole thing out expertly.  It reassures and excites, and is why I continue to read and continue to buy books, even when the shelves are already double-stacked.

So 36, which finally feels like middle age. (I’m also reading Marcus Berkmann’s excellent “A shed of one’s own”, on this very subject).  We have a son, a nice son so far, and we’re pleased about that. I have an alrightish job, I cycle to work a couple of times a week (and therefore get the exercise that keeps me sane) and I’m still able to watch Fulham with reasonable frequency.

(Football is odd, in that it’s at once far less important (it doesn’t really matter what happens) and just as all-consuming as it has been. It’s very hard to put yourself in the shoes of a modern footballer like you might a character in your favourite books, so that side of things is tricky.  I do think this explains Roy Hodgson’s appeal – Roy had a lot going for him that I admired and wanted to take in, too – and perhaps Martin Jol’s wishy-washy place in our affections: who is this man?)

So I dunno. Part of becoming what you are (as Juliana Hatfield questioned way back in the 90s) is acceptance and a gradual reversion to what you’ve always been and wanted to be all along.  So you start off well when you’re young, do things that are fun and interesting, gradually get bent out of shape by the big mean world for 20 years or so, then go about trying to bend yourself back into the original you (Scott Fitzgerald talked about the same thing in the Great Gatsby, although there was a big difference: his characters didn’t want to get back to what they were; they were desperate to be something else).  I think that at 36 the unbending is going quite well, all things considered, and again, this is where the fiction comes in. As you go through this unbending you are guided by the voices of older, wiser people (here, authors), people who can see the human condition for what it is and who can steer you along the road you want to travel down.

Or as DJ Shadow put it on Lost and Found:

 
Get high get above yourself
Look down upon yourself
Until you’re inside o’ yourself
Look to the front or the back o’ yourself
 
To the back or front of yourself
It’s inside yourself
And then you see your own head
And know yourself is yourself
 
’cause when you find yourself
You’re gonna find that yourself
Is only yourself
And the self that can only be yourself
 
So when you’re in front of the back of yourself
You’re gonna find that your mind
Is in the center of yourself
And god is nothing but yourself
 
And when you reach for yourself
You’ll know that yourself
Is the only thing that can happen to yourself
So that nothing can put you down

Indeed.  In the end I didn’t buy a book. I held Ronald Reng’s Robert Enke biography in my hand for a long time but ultimately put it back. Another day.