Taking a breather

'It's a strange table', Lawrie Sanchez says, and he's not wrong. Last week's draw with Derby saw the Cottagers rise up five places to 13th - an absolutely ridiculous position more than a third of the way into the season for a team that has only won once. Can you imagine a team winning only four games all season yet being five places from the drop zone at the end of the season? Unlikely.
It's an odd season already - Chelsea aren't even in the European places - and Sanchez is perhaps lucky that several other teams have stalled as well.
Fulham have gone from the sublime to the ridiculous though - the free scoring, free conceding team has now reverted to a toothless attacking force but which can usually stifle the other team. The worrying thing is that Sanchez seems as perplexed as we are. I know which one I would prefer to watch.
For all the goals I have seen Fulham score this season, none stick in the mind as coming from particularly good interplay between the front two, and sometimes three, strikers. There doesn't appear to be any idea over what the best combination is either, although Sanchez seems to think that Healey and Kamara cannot play together and just interchanges them. I'm less impressed with Kamara - he needs to pull his finger out. You can only live off a last minute, overhead kick equaliser against close North London rivals for so long.
I'm also worried about the lack of character the team seems to have, Spurs match aside. When the team needs a leader, all 11 players seem to turn into a Madeleine McCann suspect - completely faceless.
I get the feeling that Fulham have played most of the weaker sides without picking up enough points and by Christmas will likely be in the drop zone. The team are starting to look like they did on Easter Monday under Chris Coleman - already down. If they don't pick up a couple of wins in the next few matches, Al Fayed will be under pressure to get rid of Sanchez and start again.
Hopefully it will all start turning around in the next few weeks, but I won;t be around to see it. I'm heading down under for an Australian holiday for a couple of weeks. Toodle pip.