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Saturday 4th November. Once again I decided against travelling down to Craven Cottage through a mixture of indifference and needing to do some work on the car as the MOT is due in a couple of weeks. The full match commentary provided by our local radio station makes such a welcome relief to putting up with the Bradford City commentary on Radio Leeds Leeds Leeds waiting for the odd goal update. Multi millionaire Harrods owner Mohammed Al Fayed owns Fulham having bought the club after he failed to gain a financial interest in near neighbours Chelsea. Since his acquisition he has pumped some serious money into the club lifting them from obscurity to serious Premiership contenders and they are now managed by former French international Jean Tigana with former Everton and Marseilles midfielder John Collins acting as player/coach and translator. They have added some real class up front with Saha, Goldbaek and Hayles scoring goals for fun this season. The formation chosen by Macari seemed to reflect Fulham’s potency and Town impotency in front of goal with a 5-4-1 line up with the recovered Martin Smith playing the role of lone striker. Town seemed to be adopting a safety first campaign with a 0-0 draw looking to be the primary objective of the afternoons endeavours, and under the circumstances this would be considered to be a success. On the whole Mr Macari’s tactic was quite effective as the expensively assembled home side enjoyed long spells of possession without creating much in front of goal. The task was made easier for the blanket midfield and defence of the Terriers by Fulham’s patient approach that gave our players plenty of chance to make their tackles most of which went back to the home side for them to repeat the process. Only Louis Saha seemed to possess the pace to unlock the defence but the support play was so ponderous that most of the time the delivery never reached the Frenchman and Vaesen had surprisingly little to do. When Saha did manage something of a shot he either failed to find the target or Vaesen was able to tidy up without too much fuss. At the other end of the pitch Maik Taylor must have wondered why he bothered putting his gloves on as Town created virtually nothing apart from a Scott Sellars free kick on the half hour that Taylor was able to save routinely and a Dean Gorré effort turned around his post by the keeper. The name of the game today was not to concede and the half time interval arrived with this particular goal achieved. The second half began with a defensive re-shuffle as Thomas Heary replaced the injured Kevin Gray, which was a great shame after the back line, had snuffed out Fulham’s threat quite effectively. Fulham also made a tactical change bringing on Fernandes for Davis and these changes brought about a change in the game as the Londoners started to dominate proceedings as the second half progressed and took an inevitable lead in the 57th minute. Fulham were awarded a free kick following a bookable challenge by Rob Kozluk, and the kick was skilfully played towards the edge of the 6-yard box by substitute Fernandes where it was met by the head of Louis Saha to notch his 15th goal of the season. This goal seemed to signal the end to Town’s ambitions for the afternoon and a comeback sounded to be completely out of the question and even the introduction of Danny Schofield up front for Dean Gorré in the 65th minute did little to improve our striking fortunes. Town continued to defend doggedly in a damage limitation exercise, but never looked as though a bottom versus top surprise was on the cards. The cause was further upset when Scott Sellars had to walk following a second bookable offence in the 67th minute although the decision was perhaps harsh from a referee who seemed to be affording more protection to the home side. It was backs to the wall stuff as Fulham were rampant by this stage but at least it looked as though it would at least not dent the goal difference too much. All of this changed in the last couple of minutes as the pressure and numerical disadvantage took its toll to give the scoreline a rather flattering look in favour of the home side. The second goal in the 88th minute was a shot from Bjarne Goldbaek that took an awful deflection past Nico Vaesen who seemed to have the initial effort covered. A third goal was then added a couple of minutes into stoppage time from Irish international Steve Finnan who shot neatly home after Town’s wilting defence gave him too much time. In addition to the cost in terms of zero points and minus 3 for the goal difference four players were booked in addition to the dismissal of Scott Sellars. The squad is already badly stretched and we could do without suspensions adding to our selection problems. The final score was harsh on Town who put up a gritty rearguard action, but when you haven’t scored for 6 games the defence is always going to be under tremendous pressure, particularly against a team of Fulham’s calibre. Although the football season still has around 6 months to go, we are starting to run out of games, and the great escape spirit of 3 years ago seems to be lacking. Perhaps now it’s time to get the routeplanner out to check out journeys to the likes of Bristol Rovers, Reading and Bournemouth etc.
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All words and thoughts by Chris except where stated.
A big thank you to Machala for putting up with me doing this and Ian for his support and my Mum for her proof reading.
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