Return of the King

For all the expected result at West Ham (ten games Fulham have taken the lead now without winning), it was brilliant to see Jimmy Bullard back and hear the reception that he received.
Bullard really is the everyman, he's the epitome of the berk you used to play football with after school, only this one has made it to the top level of football.
Bullard has only played three and a third games for Fulham before this, scoring two goals and getting the side four points. Perhaps he can be the spark that will get Fulham some much needed points away from home, because they look unlikely to get enough just from their home games.
A draw against Arsenal on Saturday will be an unbelievable result, but in essence Fulham need a win, which goes to show the difficulties Woy Hodgson has got. Even if Fulham beat Arsenal, they will stay in the relegation zones.
Hodgson needs a striker and a quick centre-back. He could also do with a ball-winner in the middle of the park, but Fulham's cup runneth over with midfielders already.

Fulham 2 - 2 Bristol Rovers

Well I thought this would be the first home win I'd seen since the start of the season, but sadly the picture was all too familiar. At least on the pitch. Off the pitch and in the stands was a little bit strange.
As we only booked the seats for the cup match on the Friday I had to pick the tickets up from the ground (which cost an extra £1 for some unfathomable reason), so I got to Craven Cottage early. The place was swarming with Bristol Rovers fans. I met the boys in the Fulham fans only Golden Lion (locked doors and I had to show my season ticket to be let in) as the other two pubs were closed to football colours, probably because of the scary influx of Bristollians. What I didn't expect is that they would still outnumber the Fulham fans once inside the ground.
Apparently the 'pirates' brought 7,000. The official attendance was 13,500. Not surprisingly, they made more noise than the Fulham fans - especially as the Fulham team had actually given them plenty to sing about. In all honesty, they were better than most Premiership fans that have visited the Cottage. They even had some inventive and original songs.
We'd billeted ourselves in the Riverside Stand as that meant I had watched a match in all four sections of the ground this season, but the Riverside is a much different prospect than its three other brethren. It feels wrong somehow to sing-a-long (and swear at the players) when surround by the infant and infirm. At half time we decamped back to the Hammersmith Stand, pretty much like a lower league team's fans can, and joined in some of the singing there instead.
I even heard a song that I'd not come across before - Fulham fans singing sarcastically about winning the Intertoto Cup. Perhaps there's life in the old dogs yet.

Fulham 1 - 2 Chelsea

Well it was the first game under Woy Hodgson's direction, but the script seemed pretty similar. One up going into half time, only to be beaten in 90 minutes. In fairness to the new gaffer he hadn't had much time with the team, so he wouldn't have been able to change too much in that period of time, even if it was against a slightly lacklustre Chelsea side.
All the goals happened down the other end of the ground so we couldn't see what was going on, however the Hammersmith End were in good voice for this match. It's not often you can say that. Obviously it helped with being against the local rivals but I reckon the kick off also played its part. 12.45pm on New Year's Day - everyone is still pissed.
It was good to see Mauritz Volz playing as he added a bit of dynamism to the side, but Fulham were very poor and lucky to be leading. Strange thing is Chelsea were also incredibly poor, but deserved the win.
I'd never really noticed how big Michael Ballack is. He's massive. It' s just a shame he goes down at the merest touch. It's an even bigger shame that the referees keep falling for it, as happened here in my opinion.
While Ballack is big, Alex the centre half is even bigger. If you combined all the Fulham squad into one big, semi-talented footballing monstrosity, I kind of think you'd end up with something that does not look entirely dislike Alex.
The good thing about this game is, for the first time in three matches, we got to do the 'you're shit aaaah' chant to the goalie while they were taking a goal kick. Freak's of play (and Fulham not having any shots) means that the opposition goal keeper taking goal kicks at the Hammersmith End have been few and far between. In fact the first two goal kicks they had the bastard Hilario ended up passing it to the left back rather than booting it upfield, the bastard.
I'm not sure if anyone else is joining in when we barrack the goalie in this way, but we're enjoying it so we don't care. It's strange that most of the fun at this match derived from us singing daft songs about Jarrod pulling the night before rather than what was directly happening on the pitch. You've got to make your own entertainment at the Cottage these days.

Fulham 1 - 1 Wigan Athletic

I actually ended up in the Johnny Haynes stand for this game, using one of the special offer extra £5 tickets available to season ticket holders. I was way over the other corner to where I usually sit and crikey, it was quiet. I was easily the loudest person in there. This being Wigan there were also lots of empty seats (still made of wood in JH) but fewer than expected. It was definitely the smallest away crowd seen though.
Fulham were unlucky to be playing them at this point as they'd turned it around under new (and old) manager Steve Bruce.
In truth Fulham were all over Wigan in the first half, playing some wonderful sweeping football. How they didn't score I don't know. The second half struggled to be honest, at least until Marcus Bent scored. While it wasn't against the run of play, I couldn't say Wigan deserved it. It was actually the second time I'd seen Bent score this season - I went to Charlton v Scunthorpe on the opening game of the season and he got the equaliser there. I spoke to a Charlton fan later who was chuffed that Bent had scored because it might fool another club to come in and make an offer for 'the lazy sod'. Hence the transfer to Wigan.
The game picked up again after this and Dempsey's goal was a very smart finish. I can't quite put a handle on Dempsey. He appears to have been deployed in the inside right position, so it's hard to judge his impact. He's been scoring some important goals though. He's certainly more effective than Bouazza at inside left.
Caretaker manager Ray Lewington was bullish about his chances of taking the job on full time after this result. The thing is, it was a home draw against a relegation rival. It's not going to be enough to keep Fulham up especially with home games against the top four and a woeful away record. Fortunately Lewington has got the heave-ho after the 5-1 humiliation by Spurs for the surprise appointment of Roy Hodgson.
Hodgson is particularly well qualified, but I don't think that he will bring the attractive football that Chairman Mo is after. He will make Fulham hard to beat though, which is a step in the right direction. I'll reserve my judgement until I've seen the new look side under 'Woy' but I've a horrible feeling he won't be able to save the team from relegation.

The most unwanted Christmas present

"I think that Sanchez has bought extremely well this close season and I have a feeling the team will not struggle like most papers are predicting."

Shows you what I know. I wrote this on the blog's very first entry. I can't help but feel that Sanchez has been unlucky in being shown the door. The fans resented him from the start, as most of them didn't appear to want to see the end of Chris 'Cookie' Coleman, but Sanchez hasn't been able to turn them around by actually winning some games. Fulham may have only just dropped into the relegation zone, but the bottom half of the table has been pretty false reading because of the dearth of quality. Only Derby have won fewer games than Fulham's two in the league and the Cottagers have drawn more games than anyone else.
I've started to wonder if I'm a jinx. I think the last season ticket I got at Man United was the season that Alex Ferguson replaced on Atkinson. Still that managerial switch did the job. This might be Fulham's last managerial change for two decades!
The hot money is on ex-player John Collins taking over the hot-seat after he resigned from Hibs just yesterday, with ex-manager Jean Tigana coming in as director of football. In any case, tomorrow's game against Wigan should be interesting.