Fulham

Pic. Kos opens his account for the year. Daily Mail.

Oh my sainted giddy aunt. When thinking that the QPR game summed up our season in one game, I mentioned purring like a Rolls and sputtering like there was sand in the petrol tank. Perhaps I should have also said “our ability to go from sublime to ridiculous”. Undoubtably there are footballing gods who noted this and decided to emphasise this omission? If so, it was all my fault. Mea bloody culpa.

How did we manage to turn a sparkling first half performance, which should have seen at least a 2 goal lead plus a penalty, into an over-run shambles in the second? Well before Djourou got his questionable cards, we were on the back foot. Fulham came oh so close to equalizing and we had trouble getting out of our own half. I don’t know what Shrek told Fulham to do, but they were doing it well. Or did we just switch off? Even Chesney was looking suspect and although he made some good saves, he didn’t seem at all happy with crosses. Mind you, that could be because Per was being out jumped by people at least 6” shorter than he is. Such a pity that Squillaci wasn’t out-jumped in the last minute. His pathetic excuse of a headed clearance turned into a perfect pass for Zamora who accepted the chance gratefully.

Kos and Le Coq were standing firm as was Alex Song. Our problems were really emanating from having no support to the mid-field…Vinho at least was attempting to pull defensive weight unlike Theo who quite honestly was a disaster again. How the hell he reportedly has the confidence to want a rise on his new contract is amazing…he doesn’t appear to have the confidence on the field to prevent a wage cut.
By all means give a rise to Coquelin, he’s been impressive in his new role and looked quite at home. He was admittedly given a few problems later in the game by Ruis but then so was everybody else.

One point out of six from Fulham is not the sort of form to get 4th place or better so we’d better get the fingers out and some of the injured out of the sick bay.

Quite who we’ll play against Leeds is a mystery. Now even our reserve, reserve full backs are injured or banned. Coq will stay, but at right back…who? Maybe a very inexpensive, short term punt on Blackburn’s 35 year old Salgado could solve a mini crisis. And with over 50 caps for Spain his experience may be a good thing in the reserves. For sure he’s one of the few Blackburn players to impress and they’re seemingly very reluctant to play him as they’ll have to offer a new contract.