“If the score stays the same it’ll be their greatest result ever”

Neville in commentary when Hungary went 1 up.

Now, we all know this is stupid, but perhaps not how stupid.

Are you aware of eloratings.net?    It’s a rating system for international football which borrows from a chess scoring system to rate all international teams ever.   It works, and avoids a lot of the oddities we sometimes see in the official FIFA ratings.

Anyway, the joy of this is that you can go back into history and see how teams were rating on any given day.   England’s high point was the game after they’d won the World Cup, as you might expect.    The system has Brazil at their peak in 1962, West Germany in 1974, and Holland, intriguingly, in the latest World Cup (but if you look at this year’s results, they have beaten some fine sides).  Spain have never been better.

But the highest score anyone has ever received came in 1954, by, you’ve guessed it, Hungary.    The 1953 win at Wembley is well known (rightly so, it remains a fantastic story), but after that you have the 7-1 return victory, an 8-3 victory over West Germany in the ’54 World Cup, a 4-2 win over Brazil in the same tournament, then a 4-2 win over Uruguay.   A great, great team.   Amazingly they lost the Final, in part because Adi Dassler had just invented long, screw-in studs for muddy ground, which he ensured the Germans alone were able to wear.   During the match decisions went Germany’s way, and Hungary missed the glory that that team deserved.

Bobby Zamora’s first 45 minutes in an England shirt turned another routine international friendly into a full-on “c’mon!” session.    At first England didn’t seem to be playing through Zamora, whose role as a spearhead was undermined by the team’s reluctance to feed him balls he could use.

Then Wayne Rooney went off and the whole thing changed.   Steve Gerrard moved nearer to Zamora, the team moved nearer to Zamora, and again we had something.

Bob was not as central to England’s attacks as he is for ours, and we wouldn’t expect him to be, but what he did do is show for the ball, shift it on quickly when he could, hold it up when he couldn’t, and generally bring some composure to the England attacks.   It didn’t all work out, but by the time the full-time whistle was blown he’d nearly scored twice, once with a swirling volley from well outside the area that Gabor Kiraly just tipped over, and then with a well taken header that the betracksuited ‘keeper pawed away well.    Top goalkeeping, disappointing for those of us cheering on at home.

No matter.  He did more than enough.   If this England team is to become a team rather than a Famous Player Collective it needs to pick players for what they can do to advance the team, not for what they might do for Famous Teams in the Premiership.   We’ve said it before and will continue to do so:  Bobby Zamora does what he does better than any other English qualified forward.   If we need a player of this type – and the evidence suggests that we might – then it should be Zamora.

I’m chuffed as nuts for him, I really am.   Haven’t felt this happy after an England game for a long time.

Philippe Senderos has busted his achilles tendon in training.    He’s had surgery but won’t be in action for some time.

Tough break for the lad:  he joined Fulham expecting to work with Roy Hodgson, saw that go down the pan, now he’s not going to play for anyone.    Get well soon, Philippe.

Just as Mark Schwarzer is said to have slapped in a transfer request, Fulham have retaliated by slapping a £10 million valuation on him.

Hopefully when everyone calms down and stops slapping they can work something out.

For my money Fulham are exactly right here.  Good goalkeepers are, I am almost certain, rarer than we think.  We have one of the good ones and, frankly, £3.5 million or whatever Arsenal want to pay is not much use to us if Schwarzer goes.  There aren’t enough quality goalkeepers around, and unless we get very lucky, selling him will cost us goals, games, and points.   If he won’t sign a new contract, fine, but you don’t let your very best players go for £3.5 million if you can help it.

If Bobby Zamora makes his debut for England tonight, and all reports suggest he will, he’ll be only the fourth Fulham player to feature for the national team since we arrived in the Premier League 10 seasons ago. At 29 not even Bobby’s greatest fan could have predicted this opportunity a year ago but having completed one of the most amazing seasons in his career thus far he undoubtedly deserves his chance.

England are at a low ebb right now. If nothing else, our performance in South Africa opened a few eyes. We’re not quite as talented as we once thought and need to improve in a lot of areas if we’re going to compete with the world’s best. In the short term this means building a team for Euro 2012. Could Zamora be a genuine contender to be a part of the squad? The experience of Fulham’s other recent English hopefuls suggest it won’t be easy.

In February 2003 Sean Davis became the first Fulham player to be selected for England since George Cohen’s last game in November 1967. The friendly played at Upton Park saw England lose 3-1 to Australia and despite Sven-Goran Eriksson using 22 players Sean remained on the bench. Davis played one more full season for Fulham before moving on to Spurs but has yet to be selected for England again.

An injury crisis in defence gave Zat Knight his chance during a summer tour of the USA in May 2005. England played two friendlies and Zat featured in both. The first match, a 2-1 win over the States in Chicago, saw Knight replace Sol Campbell at half time. Zat earnt his first start, and played the full 90 minutes, three days later as England beat Colombia 3-2 in New Jersey. The tour was more about financial rewards than developing a team for the 2006 World Cup but in truth Zat didn’t do enough to suggest he deserved to be any higher in the Centre Back pecking order. Much like Sean Davis, selection for England raised Zat’s expectations but it was another two seasons before he moved on to Aston Villa.

The inimitable Jimmy Bullard secured our most recent brush with the three lions. Selected for back to back World Cup Qualifiers in September 2008. An unimpressive 2-0 win against Andorra was followed by a stunning 4-1 victory over Croatia in Zagreb. Both games were negotiated without the need for Jimmy to remove his tracksuit and after less than four months JB was on his way to Hull with a price tag befitting an England International.

Can Zamora stake a claim to feature in the squad for more than just one game? Can he be the first Fulham player of the Premier League era to earn a cap in a competitive match? To do so he would need to convince Capello that he has something to offer in qualifying for the 2012 European Championships. Despite a poor World Cup, Wayne Rooney remains key to a successful English team. Bobby may well provide the perfect foil for Rooney’s talent. He’ll certainly bring a work ethic to the side that appeared seriously missing in South Africa.

I’ve made the mistake of getting over excited about Fulham players picked for England in the past. I really upset some scousers when Jimmy B got the call and with hindsight they were probably right. I do hope that Bobby does himself credit and will be very proud to see him take the field however long he gets.

Further to yesterday’s Dempsey post, I was so pleased with the approach that I thought I’d run a couple more players.

First, the team seems equally likely to do well or badly whether Dickson Etuhu plays or not – his ‘present’ vs ‘absent’ scores are almost exactly the same.       You might expect this, I suppose.

But if you believe these numbers (and why wouldn’t you?), while we miss Dempsey when he’s not starting, the absence of Davies or Gera hasn’t tended to be a problem.    Indeed, we are much more likely to suffer an unexpected result with either starting, and (therefore) much less likely to suffer an unexpected result when they’re missing.

(As a reminder, what we’re looking at here are the times when Fulham have either met, exceeded or faltered against Ladbrokes’ expected result for each game in the last two seasons, split by whether certain players started or not.  NB this is league matches only; Gera’s European magic is a different kettle of fish).

What does this suggest?   The beauty of this approach is that it attempts to cover the problem of which games a player is selected in.   We can run all sorts of numbers but if a player is regularly playing in tough matches then he’ll look bad.  But this way, if we’re expected to lose and do, then no skin of anyone’s nose.   It’s a straight form vs expected results methodology.   

The Davies effect goes along with what we saw with our eyes:  he has played much of the last two seasons injured, and only really started to thrive late on in 2010.   His playing through pain may have affected the team more than we thought.  

Gera?   A tale of two seasons:

In 2008/09 we were a much better team without Gera in the side.  This season we’re still unlikely to really miss him, but it’s a vast improvement, again reflecting what we’ve seen with our eyes.

I can’t really run this sort of analysis on many of the other players, as the settled squad means that most have played most games, so you don’t get any differentials to explore.    The information above, though, does suggest that we need to keep Clint around.

ADDENDUM:

Hotspots:  Neither Davies nor Gera; Davies not Gera; Dempsey not Davies; Dempsey not Gera.

Clint Dempsey is a really good footballer.   He contributes goals from midfield, defends well, works hard, and is a threat from set pieces.  He can also deliver the unexpected, although he attempts the unexpected so often that eventually the unexpected is only unexpected in its success.    From his position on the left he works well with Paul Konchesky, Zoltan Gera and Bobby Zamora, and is a real asset to the team.   Furthermore, if you think about the squad’s saleable assets, it pretty much comes down to him and Hangeland.   Despite this, it looks like Dempsey is on the outside looking in again.

Chris Coleman brought him over from the US and wouldn’t play him.  Lawrie Sanchez did play him (with some success), but then he was in and out of the side under Roy in the Great Escape, then out of the side at the start of the season after that.   At this point Gera was playing every week and not cutting it, while an increasingly irate Dempsey was coming on as sub and playing well.   Then he scored that bombastic late equaliser at Portsmouth and was in the team from then on.   Then last season he injured himself at Blackburn at a point where he was playing very well (hitting the bar with a bicycle kick in that very game), Simon Davies came in and played well, and Dempsey was again unable to get back into the side and ended up playing centre-forward in the Europa League final.

Then on Saturday he got the start in Mark Hughes’ first game, made way for Gera and watched the latter (why do people refer to players as “the [nationality]”? – “The Hungarian” sounds really weird doesn’t it?  Only in football.  If I wrote a report describing a research respondent as “The Londoner” people would wonder what I was on about) score a hat-trick.

So yes, here he is, arguably one of our best players, and again it looks like he’s going to struggle to get a regular game.   You could forgive him for feeling angry about this.

Some numbers.  It’s been a while, hasn’t it?  Anyway:

Games Clint has not started in versus those he has started in over the last two seasons:

No Clint 21 games (1.1. points per game)   Result as expected 12 57% Result not as expected, Fulham do well 5 24% Result not as expected, Fulham disappointed 4 19% Clint starts 55 games (1.4 points per game)   Result as expected 28 51% Result not as expected, Fulham do well 21 38% Result not as expected, Fulham disappointed 6 11%

 

In the above I have taken Ladbrokes’ predicted outcome as the ‘expected’ result.   Anything other than the predicted outcome is ‘unexpected’. 

I don’t know if there’s something there or not, but it does tend to suggest that the famed Dempsey fire is contributing *something*.   

It’s also worth noting that he’s started in most of the “big upsets” we’ve seen in recent times, matches in which we’ve really bucked the odds:

CD? Date HomeTeam AwayTeam FTHG FTAG No 23/08/2008 Fulham Arsenal 1 0 Yes 22/11/2008 Liverpool Fulham 0 0 Yes 28/12/2008 Fulham Chelsea 2 2 Yes 28/02/2009 Arsenal Fulham 0 0 Yes 21/03/2009 Fulham Man United 2 0 Yes 31/10/2009 Fulham Liverpool 3 1 Yes 19/12/2009 Fulham Man United 3 0 No 11/04/2010 Liverpool Fulham 0 0

 

All of which suggests to me that we need to find a way to keep this man in the side.  

I don’t know how you do it though:  Duff has to play, Davies is a terrific footballer, Gera is undroppable.  Murphy might be the player at risk, but I can’t see anyone else in the side who can do that job.    What do you do?  I can’t find a single configuration that allows all of these players to co-exist in a starting XI.   

(Obviously Mark Hughes may very well decide that Dempsey is a player he wants to feature, rendering all of the above somewhat moot, but there we go).

Today’s Observer has a good writeup from Jamie about the season ahead.    10th seems about right to me, too.  If we sign Craig Bellamy we could go higher still.  Time will tell.

Richard is away and I feel a little like the neighbour who has promised to take the milk in and feed the fish but then decided to use the oven to bake a cake. Hopefully the cakes worth eating and I’ve not made too much mess in the kitchen.

This season sees the introduction of the new 25 man squad rule implemented as a first step towards reducing squad sizes and increasing the number of home grown players at the top level. This excellent article on TwoHundredPercent examines what this means for the Premier League and got me thinking about how the rule would affect Fulham in the coming season.

TwoHundredPercent suggest that the rule will have little impact. Initially this certainly seems to be true and very few teams will have to make serious changes to ensure their squads conform to the new regulations. Looking at our current team we have exactly 25 players over 21 of which 13 can be considered home grown. This is consistent with most of the Premier League. Only three teams (Bolton Wanderers, Manchester City & Wolverhampton Wanderers) have squads bigger than 25 and only one team (Liverpool) have more that 17 players not considered home grown.

This is no accident. You can be sure the Premier League studied the existing team squads very closely before ratifying any changes to the rules. A home grown player is considered any player who spends three seasons, up to and including the season when they turn 21, registered to an English or Welsh club, regardless of their nationality. For Fulham this means Nigerian international Dickson Etuhu qualifies alongside his English, Irish and Welsh teammates.

Clubs will also be allowed to supplement their squad with an unlimited number of players under the age of 21. The Premier League’s definition of “Under 21” is a player born on or after 1st January 1989. This is of more value to the big teams and means the richest clubs can continue to stockpile the very best youngsters.

The squads won’t even take effect from the beginning of the season. The first deadline for naming 25 man squads is 1700 BST on 1st September (24 hours after end of August transfer window). This is good news for Fulham as, thanks to the delays in sorting out our manager, we’re likely to be conducting our business right up to the very last minute.

Changes can be made only during transfer windows, although in exceptional circumstances (e.g. goalkeeping injury crisis) moves could be allowed. Players named in the squad who are subsequently loaned to Football League clubs cannot be replaced, but can regain their spot on return to parent club. Finally the rules apply only to Premier League matches, so any non-registered squad members who we retain would be eligible to feature in the FA Cup or League Cup.

There’s plenty of room for manoeuvre then with our current squad. The table below shows our existing 25 senior pros and highlights those who are home grown (HG) or not. I’ve also listed the current contract periods (thanks to White Noise at Friends of Fulham for a lot of this information). NB: I’ve seen no confirmation of either but Gera must surely have had a 2 year extension activated to take him through to 2012, and Simon Davies was hopeful of agreeing his own extension prior to the Europa League semi-final.

No. Nation Pos Name Contract 1 Australia GK Mark Schwarzer Not Final Year 2 R.Ireland DF Stephen Kelly HG 2012 3 England DF Paul Konchesky HG Final Year 4 Ghana DF John Pantsil Not Final Year 5 Norway DF Brede Hangeland Not 2013 6 N.Ireland DF Chris Baird HG Final Year 8 England FW Andy Johnson HG 2012 11 Hungary MF Zoltán Gera Not Final Year/2012 12 England GK David Stockdale HG 2013 13 England MF Danny Murphy HG Final Year 15 Senegal FW Diomansy Kamara Not Final Year 16 R.O.I MF Damien Duff HG 2012 17 Norway MF Bjørn Helge Riise Not 2012 18 N.Ireland DF Aaron Hughes HG 2013 19 Switz. GK Pascal Zuberbühler Not 2011 20 Nigeria MF Dickson Etuhu HG Final Year 21 U.S.A FW Eddie Johnson Not Final Year 22 Sweden DF Fredrik Stoor Not 2012 23 U.S.A MF Clint Dempsey Not 2013 25 England FW Bobby Zamora HG 2012 27 England MF Jonathan Greening HG 2012 29 Wales MF Simon Davies HG 2010 ? 34 SouthAfrica MF Kagisho Dikgacoi Not Final Year 35 Sweden FW David Elm Not 2012 — Switzerland DF Philippe Senderos Not 2013

Of the players with reasonable contract periods Hangeland and Dempsey seem the most likely to attract bidders. Having shown ambition in our choice of manager it would be a shame to lose any of our best performers now. Hangeland seems to be a man who knows his own mind and has been quoted as saying he would like to stay. If Roy comes knocking though I wonder if he could turn down the chance to play for Liverpool. Dempsey may also consider that this is his best chance to move up a level. If nothing else his agent is looking to capitalise on his current status. Should either go we would undoubtedly miss them but should at least recieve a decent transfer fee.

Mark Schwarzer has been heavily linked with a move to Arsenal. £2.5 Million is a good return on a 37 year old who we signed for free but we’d need to spend a lot more than that to find someone genuinely capable of replacing him. The arrival of Hughes may be enough to convince big Mark to stay but if he does leave we must hope to attract a quality replacement. The talk has been of Robert Green or Joe Hart which says a lot about our clubs current standing in the top flight.

Frederik Stoor has another two seasons on his contract but seems a prime candidate to depart. No doubt he sees Hughes arrival as a second chance but he may not have much time to impress. John Paintsil has rather wonderfully dismissed reports linking him with a move to West Brom and I would expect Hughes to be keen to tie down our Ghanaian hero to a extended contract.

Two more hot candidates to move on are Diomansy Kamara and Eddie Johnson. Both are in their final year and have not been involved in regular first team football at Fulham for some time. I suspect our attack to be the main focus for Hughes in the next few weeks. With Andy Johnson looking like a long term injury concern it will be a priority to find someone to support Bobby Zamora. AJ may even find himself out of the initial 25.

Assuming Hughes brings in 4 or 5 new players there may well be a couple of last seasons key contributors missing out. There are a number of players in their final year and not all of them will be highly sort after, however well they performed under Hodgson. I’ve stared at that list for so long now an image is burnt into my eyes. It’s not easy picking who else to leave out. Kelly, Greening, Dikachoi or Elm? Maybe (super utility man) Baird, (captain) Murphy or (heaven forbid) Simon Davies?

A lot will depend on who we bring in of course. Whilst the 25 man squad may not radically change English football it will certainly introduce a new set of problems for a manager to come to terms with.

Midnight.

Just back from a wedding, off to Devon/Cornwall for a few days in the morning.

Here is Jim Hall (with Chet Baker and Paul Desmond!) and Concierto De Aranjuez (part 1):

Here is part 2:

Yup.

Here’s to an interesting week and some good signings.   Feel free to discuss below, as/when.

Cheers

Rich

This was my first Mark Hughes memory, and to my nine year old mind it was just about the best goal imaginable.   A bouncing ball, several feet off the ground, suddenly thrashed into the top corner from Hughes’ wonderfully judged volley.  For him it was probably just one of those moments, see the ball, kick the ball, but it registered in my mind and I always rated him after that.

Only later in his career did I understand what a complete centre-forward he was.   It’s hard to think of an obvious comparison, but Alan Shearer’s physicality springs to mind (Hughes didn’t get Shearer’s goals, of course, but scored more than you’d think when at his peak).   One of those players defenders hated to play against.

As a manager he’s done pretty well.   He was a surprising success with Wales, and that got him the Blackburn job where he went on to win 44% of his games, which is around that level of competence that suggests he knows what he’s doing.    In many ways he was the wrong man at the wrong time at City, and while he was unfortunate to lose his job after not doing much wrong, it seems to me that Mancini was an upgrade and that Hughes, ultimately, probably shouldn’t have been surprised at how things ended.

What can we expect, then?   Craig Bellamy for one thing, although quite how Hughes would fit him into the squad is hard to know.   This is the rub, in a way.  Sven would have been the continuity choice, but Hughes… we have no idea how he rates our players, do we?   I think he’ll appreciate the squad’s character, like the hard workers he finds here, but will he know how to get the best out of our journeymen players?

The other knock on Hughes is this:

Those are the Premier League’s disciplinary tables during Hughes’ time at Blackburn.   I mean, fine, no problem with toughening us up, but that’s essentially the polar opposite of where we are now, isn’t it?   I get that he took an average group and made them hard to beat, used wingers, attacked, and so on, but the above, coupled with his frankly miserable, excuse filled post match interviews, well, that’s change isn’t it?

Which is fine.    The fact that I’m even having doubts about a manager of Hughes’ apparent level says everything for the lofty position the club has found itself in, but I must admit that this isn’t an appointment I like.    No matter.   It’s another new dawn, and for one thing Hughes isn’t the sort of manager who seems likely to preside over a meltdown, which might have been the case with some of the more leftfield options we’ve seen.    No, I can envisage a couple of decent seasons now, morphing towards a Sunderland type side I guess, picking up enough points, maybe doing alright in the cups, and, for the most part, keeping on keeping on.   And that’s all we can ask for.   As Roy would often say, Fulham’s first job is always to stay in the Premier League, and while everyone’s making the right noises about progress, for me the bottom line is (to repeat myself) that Hughes should be more than savvy enough to ensure that we stay up.

And if we can sometimes win away that will be brilliant.

This morning’s Times says that Mark Schwarzer is probably going to Arsenal as soon as we get a manager, and that West Ham’s Robert Green may be the man to replace him.  No issues with this, but what it did make me realise is that there are probably other dominoes waiting to fall, we just don’t know it yet.

Paul Konchesky may, for all we know, be making that move to Birmingham.  He has only one year left on his contract, so may be able to turn that into a big final payday.  It made me wonder who else is due to expire, as it were, and in fact there are a few players in this situation.

As best I can tell, the squad breaks down as:

One more season:

Chris Baird, Dickson Etuhu, Simon Davies (?), Eddie Johnson, Diomansy Kamara, Konchesky, Danny Murphy, Schwarzer, John Paintsil.

More than that:

Everyone else.

This is a bummer for the likes of Baird, Etuhu and Paintsil, whose stock under Hodgson has risen to previously unimaginable heights, but who might be good bets to regress if their roles/instructions/etc change.   Eddie Johnson clearly needs to show some progress (Premier League football doesn’t reward potential indefinitely), Kamara’s bridges always seem to be damaged, if not yet burned (a new, ambitious kind of mixed metaphor, that), Danny Murphy is in decline but still important, and as noted above Schwarzer’s likely to be elsewhere anyway.  I can’t find anything about Simon Davies’ contract, which I had thought to be up but which clearly is not.  

Key players like Zamora, Dempsey, Hughes, Duff and Hangeland have at least two years left; Zoltan Gera has one more plus a (club?) option for two.  

The point here, I suppose, is that all of these things would be resolved, or in the process of being resolved, if we had a manager.   The ‘one more year’ crew aren’t players we cannot do without, but all would probably want some reassurance at this point, as the final year is typically ‘extension or move’ for players with something left to offer (the club gets a fee rather than allowing the player to leave for nothing, the player gets security). 

I don’t know that there’s necessarily a point to all this, besides the obvious fact that, as is the way of these things, change is again upon us.  It makes me realise how lucky Manchester United have been to see the likes of Ryan Giggs play for them for a long time, to have the same man in charge for this period.  Look back at the last few years at Fulham, the troughs, peaks, troughs, troughs, peaks, and then now, when anything might reasonably happen.  

The common thread has been Mr Al Fayed and his commitment to splurging, with varying returns on these splurges.  Now a new man will come in, will use the Chairman’s money, and once more we’ll have a new team.  There is much to be said for continuity, and some managers would bring more of this than others (although it’s got to be evolution rather than revolution this near to the start of the season), so we must hope that whoever does come in can build on what we have, rather than try to turn the whole setup on its head.  As others have mentioned, if the new man is wise enough to restrict tinkering to any great extent, while perhaps opening things up a bit away from home, then we ought to be happy enough.   This is a likeable and effective group of players, and for the most part they still have much to give.  I’m looking forward to watching them again next season, whoever’s in charge.

Murphy missed pen 5, no goals.

Team:  Stockdale; Stoor (Kamara 76, Smith 79), Hangeland, Hughes, Konchesky; Duff (Davies 45), Etuhu (Baird 45), Murphy (Kelly 63), Riise (Elm 45); Gera (Greening 63), Zamora (E.Johnson 76).

Would have loved to be there.   I was going to go to Sweden to do some more research early in the summer, but the Europa League final took the spare money so I didn’t (then Roy left anyway), but Malmo have an interesting history and there appear to be some fantastically nice people working there.    Also, the kit looks really good.

Anyway, nothing much else to go on is there?  Still no manager, the speculation continues, but I’d be stunned if the press know a thing about who we’re in talks with.   It really could be anyone.

“The chairman is obviously confident that we will have someone in place but we won’t be rushed into making a decision.

“There is no deadline. The chairman wants to make sure that he has the right man for the job and will make that decision as and when he sees necessary.

“We have our second friendly of the pre-season tour of Sweden tomorrow and the chairman is very happy with the way that preparations are going under Ray Lewington so we are not panicking here.

“It’s business as usual. Ray Lewington is doing a great job with the pre-season campaign and the managerial situation will be resolved as and when we have the right man for the job.”

So say Sky and others.

So we wait.  It’s weird all this, isn’t it?   Absolute limbo.    We are like cows in a field.

Hurray!   We’re sold out!   I was hugely proud of this year’s book, easily the biggest and best yet, so it’s great that it has found its way into as many hands as possible.

We’ve about eight 2007/08 Great Escape reprints left, and a few more of the other two (2006/07 and 2008/09).   So if you haven’t got these, please fire away while stocks last.  (www.godsfoot.com)

Cheers to everyone who has bought one of these at any point – much appreciated!

In today’s Times Literary Supplement, in an unlikely article about a book about small African gold weights, David Attenborough notes an old Ghanaian proverb:  “It is unwise to rub bottoms with a porcupine”.

I think we can all see the wisdom in that, never moreso than today.

But on reflection, I’m increasingly inclined to put this down to “one of those things”.

Ajax have done nothing wrong here, merely protecting their right to retain a contracted employee.  Were I an Ajax fan, I’d be delighted with the board for their work here.

Martin Jol, supposedly the villain of the piece, may have done nothing that a hundred football people don’t do every off-season, namely look to negotiate a better (or different) job.   He wanted to come back to England, found a job that worked for him, and went about getting it.  In the end he was thwarted by the contract he himself had signed, so swings and roundabouts but no real blame.

Fulham have been unfortunate in this, keeping quiet until the last possible moment and only contributing snippets to the press when the cat of Martin Jol was well and truly out of the bag.   There is criticism of Alastair Mackintosh for not landing this particular big fish (cat, fish, what next?), but is this fair?  He had been led to believe that Jol’s contract allowed for such an approach, and if he then found this not to be the case, well, what can you do?   He aimed high in going for Jol and fell short:  this is the risk when you stretch yourself, isn’t it?   Again, though, in this he could hardly win:  aim low and incur the wrath of ‘ambitious’ supporters; aim high and things can get difficult.  (Which is why Fulham have tried to keep things quiet, of course.)

The person who comes out of this badly is perhaps Roy Hodgson, who I’ve defended throughout, but whose decision to leave so late (again, the question of whether he could have done anything differently remains unresolved) has now exposed us to a very difficult timeline.  To put myself in work shoes, for a moment:

• w/c Sat July 17th – Jol deal falls through
• w/c Sat July 24th – no manager in place
• w/c Sat July 31st
• w/c Sat August 7th
• w/c Sat August 14th – first game of season

It’s Friday 22nd now.  That leaves three weeks until the start of the season.   Pre-season training is more or less okay, in that Ray Lewington can run all this, but here’s the thing:  suppose New Manager wants to impose a new style of play?   Now, we accept that often managers have to start their work mid-season (as did Roy), but equally, it takes more than three weeks to get a team in tune with your ways (as it did with Roy).   Throw in the need to buy new players (which we do need to do), and there’s maybe a problem brewing.

This could have been a difficult season even if Roy had stayed, and while things may yet take a turn for the better, time is marching on and the delays certainly aren’t helping.

On a brighter note, today on the way home I was reading a short story in “Love and Obstacles” by Aleksandar Hemon:

He was rewinding the tape, pressing the Stop and Play buttons alternately, trying to find the beginning.  The tape squeeled and yelped until he pinpointed the moment of silence before “Stairway to Heaven.
“There’s so much you don’t know, son.  Do you know what you don’t know?”
“No I don’t.”
“You have no idea what you don’t know.  Before you know anything, you have to know what you don’t know.”
“I know.”
“The fuck you do.”

And so much for that.  But the wonder of modern music players is that you can conjure up these songs in a jiffy, and soon indeed I was reading away with this splendid song chiming on in my ears, the first time I’d played it in ages.   What a joy.

There’s a lady who’s sure
All that glitters is gold
And she’s buying a stairway to heaven
When she gets there she knows
If the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
And she’s buying a stairway to heaven
There’s a sign on the wall
But she wants to be sure
‘Cause you know sometimes words have
Two meanings
In a tree by the brook
There’s a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are
Misgiven
Ooh, it makes me wonder
Ooh, it makes me wonder

Which, translated, means “I have played a blinder here and got exactly what I wanted from Ajax while leading Fulham along like a… well, anyway”.

It feels like something out of a film.  Our hero, a brown suited underslept journalist played by Jake Gyllenhaal, sits in the office, shooting screwn up paper into waste bins, getting ribbed by Robert Downey Jr and under pressure from his domineering boss (played by an older man with white hair).  

“Get me the story!” – “There is no story.  This one’s tighter than a Koufax curveball.  Nobody’s saying shit.” – “Someone must be saying something!” – “Sven’s agent said something that was really nothing.  Stuart Baxter is bewildered.  Alan Curbishley thinks he’s out.  Bilic we don’t know.  I tell you, nothing!” – “All right, but nothing can’t stay nothing forever.  Make something in 48 hours!”

Gylenhaal shrugs, dejected.  His next paper ball hits the rim of the bin and drops to the floor, where it settles, accusingly. 

That night he confides in his beautiful and caring wife, a trainee teacher from the midwest not yet ground down by the city’s irrepressable dark side.  They live in a small apartment full of large boxes.  A subway train passes, the apartment shakes.  Rain hammers against the window.  Sirens howl from the streets below, a hundred incidents, a dozen resolutions.  “It’ll happen, baby.  Tomorrow you’ll get a clue.  Just write another 48 hours story for now.  It’ll come soon.”

Next day in the office.  Gylenhaal sips coffee from a plastic cup.  The phone rings.   He leaps out of his chair, spilling his coffee on his trousers.  “Yes?  Yes.  Yes.  I’m on it.”

He hangs up and runs, knocking files off one desk, dancing edgily past colleagues carrying coffee, like Barry Sanders in a broken backfield.  “Sorry, bad rush.” He sprints down the corridor, passing his boss on the way: “Amsterdam!  They’ve gone to Amsterdam!”

He hails a taxi at the foot of the steps outside.  “Airport!”   Traffic is bad, and on the way he calls his wife, who is upset but understanding.  This is his big break, they both agree.   He finds a flight and is on his way.  He’s going to Amsterdam.  The cat is out of the bag:  it’s Jol. 

PS Anyway, here’s the latest.

I was digging around the internet looking for Martin Jol’s transfer dealings when Ken V on TIFF posted the following, which lists them all.

Some of the dealings, then:

2004/05 in:  Paul Stalteri (free), Andy Reid (£4m), Michael Dawson (£4m), Michael Carrick (£2.75m), Pedro Mendes (£2m)
2004/05 out: Simon Davies (£3m), Kasey Keller (£.5m)

2005/06 in: Dimitar Berbatov (£10.9m), Benoit Assou-Ekotto (£3.5m), Danny Murphy (£2m), Jermaine Jenas (£7m), Edgar Davids (Free), Aaron Lennon (£1m), Tom Huddelstone (£2.5m), Wayne Routledge (£2.5m)
2005/06 out:  Stephen Kelly (£.75m), Michael Brown (£2m), Frederic Kanoute (£4.4m)

2006/07 in:  Younes Kaboul (?), Darren Bent (£16.5m), Gareth Bale (£6m), Pascal Chimbonda (£4.5m), Steeeeeeeeeeed (£2m), Mido (£4.5m), Didier Zokora (£8.2m)
2006/07 out: Edgar Davids (free), Michael Carrick (£18.6m), Andy Reid (£3m) (Danny Murphy left after this season, as did Wayne Routledge).

First thing to say is that we don’t know how much of the above was Jol and how much was the Director of Football.  My memory is that the latter was doing more than Jol wanted, and that signings like Darren Bent were not exactly what the team needed at the time (what with having Berbatov, Keane and Defoe already).     Otherwise you can see some really strong evidence of trying to pick up young, talented British players, which augers well for the like of Matthew Briggs and Keanu Marsh-Brown who might never have got a real look under Hodgson.

It’s a pretty good list, not just in terms of quality (which is good), but also in the type of player you see there.  There is a lovely blend of technical players and grafters, of established players and hot prospects.

Encouraging.

And there’s more:

In 2003/04 (before Jol) Spurs finished 14th with 45 points and a goal difference of -10 (4 away wins)
In 2004/05 Spurs finished 9th with 52 points and a goal difference of +6 (5 away wins!)
In 2005/06 Spurs finished 5th with 65 points and a goal difference of +15 (6 away wins!)
In 2006/07 Spurs finished 5th with 60 points and a goal difference of +3 (5 away wins!)

They got rid of him and finished 11th with 46 points, +5 (3 away wins) (this was part Ramos, part Redknapp, the latter, as I will always point out, feasting on an underperforming side and taking it back to exactly where it should have been, thus cementing his reputation as some kind of guru).

So Martin Jol took an underperforming mid-table team to the limit of what it might reasonably have achieved, then got axed.  He did this while bringing in some pleasing footballers, and while doing so, managed to win at least five away games a season.

Without wanting to get too carried away, this all sounds wonderful.  The strength of the teams above us means that we’re not going to waltz into 5th place or anything, but this appointment (if it happens) does suggest good times ahead. Roy Hodgson may very well have taken Fulham as far as he could, but that doesn’t mean Martin Jol can’t take us further.

Tremendous picture from Simon Shaw here:

Which was taken during a stadium tour shortly after this game.

Interesting on a few levels (“Boa always over the ball” is intriguing in its insistence, and much else of good ponderability there too)…   you’d assume that players might remember these sorts of details, but if writing things on a board saves a goal a season then it’s worth it, isn’t it?