Gary Speed - RIP

Just been blown away by the news that Gary Speed has died, aged just 42. Speed was one of those few players that seemed to hold the respect of fans from all around the country and had rightly experienced success on the pitch. It appears he was just making similar progress from the dugout too with Wales.
His unexpected death is a massive loss to football and I can only imagine how his family and friends are feeling now. Tragic.

Woy's wise words

He's still Fulham's greatest ever manager and continues to endear from The Hawthorns. here is what he had to say this week:

"The really worrying thing is seeing young children making obscene gestures when they don't know what they are doing. When I was growing up, watching Crystal Palace, you supported your club and cheered them on, but I'm not sure in those days that people even booed. The opposition were not there to be hated...Human nature should not astonish us, but what engenders that degree of hatred? I don't know whether we do enough to educate people to be more tolerant of the opposition, or whether society has changed to such a degree that it is impossible. Teachers are there to be hated, police officers are there to be hated. We don't seem to have many public figures any more who command respect. The people we look up to, it seems, are sporting idols, and even then we hate them if they are not ours."

 He does stand apart from most other British managers, doesn't he?

More (ITV) 4

Managed to catch the second half of the Wisla Krakow game on Thursday. Unfortunately. I was incredibly concerned at the flatness of play up front before I became aware that Fulham had been reduced to ten men with that well-known scoundrel Moussa Dembele playing the hard man.
Even when Wisla cracked in a quality shot from 20 yards that nestled in Schwarzer's net, there appeared to be no change in tactics from Fulham.in order to claw their way back into the game. Several times Andy Johnson would be in the opposition box along with five defenders, with Fulham passing the ball around the edge before a hopeful and usually hopeless cross. Duff in particular looked lost, seemingly playing more central but not knowing where to go when he did have the ball.
Without Dempsey and Zamora and £10m Costa Rican Ruiz cup tied, there were no other goalscoring options when Orlando Sa went off with a hamstring. Those unkind might argue there were few options with the Portuguese on the pitch.
QPR match aside, these are still worrying times for Fulham, given that they reside just above the relegation zone having played just one of the top six teams, and are not showing any semblance of consistency on the pitch. Fingers crossed for the Everton match tomorrow - although they usually have the good grace to hand over three points when at the Cottage (last two seasons aside). That could put Fulham above Arsenal - and who wouldn't have taken that at the start of the season?

The perfect football flat

Primarily in a QPR area (Loftus Road can be heard on particularly noisy days), this two bedroom flat is only 1.1 miles from South Africa Road, only 1.6 miles (and a lovely Thames walk) from Craven Cottage, or 2.4 miles from Stamford Bridge (or a short hop on the 391 bus).
It is also only 2.7 miles to Brentford's Griffin Park and, as an added bonus, 4.5 miles to Wembley, which can be viewed from the top of the building. A perfect football fan flat then!
[estate agent]
It will also protect you against cancer, make you irresistible to the opposite sex and comes with a thriving money tree.
[/estate agent]

European nights - FUL 1 -1 TWN

So I finally managed to catch up with a Fulham game, albeit on lovely Channel 5, and was partially impressed at what I saw. Young Matthew Briggs had a stormer from left back, Grygera was solid enough at left beck (although on another day with a different European ref he could have been  in serious trouble after an 'enthusiastic' tackle in the first half), Kasami was full of energy on the right (if little guile), Dembele was more effective than usual, as was AJ.
It was AJ that provided Fulham with the lead after two bits of bad defending - the first saw him cut out a square pass, while the miscontrol of the challenging defender allowed him to clip a wonderful finish past Twente's goalkeeper. Fulham were actually quite comfortable for a lot of the first half without having too many attempts on target, but have a worrying capacity to crumble under a bit of pressure this season. So it proved after Twente's headed equaliser (which went in off the back of the unfortunate Schwarzer). It's not as if Fulham hadn't been warned - only a minute earlier de Jong had come close with a similar chance. Baird at centre half really does improve distribution from the back with his long raking passes, but has a tendency to get caught underneath crosses, which is what happened at the equaliser.
Second half Fulham again started brightly, although only Dempsey really looked like a goal threat. AJ should have scored again with the simplest chance of the match, but hit it straight at Twente's keeper. Strange though that when Zamora replaced Johnson, Fulham's attacking impetus practically stopped. I think the Twente back four are more used to playing against the sort of challenges that Zamora offers rather than AJ's selfless running and things just stopped happening. Duff was practically invisible when he came on for Kasami - I've never seen him so anonymous.
The impetus then switched to Twente for the last fifteen minutes after some needless and sloppy play at the back for Fulham and in the end both teams were happy with a point knowing they've just played the hardest team in their Europa Group.
A novelty for me then watching on TV - and I'm slightly worried about co-pundit Graham Taylor. In the first half he talked about Fulham's unbeaten European home record with the co-commentator and then in the second half brought it up again as if it was a totally new discussion. Very strange. I will agree with them one one thing though - Twente's Douglas was a very impressive player.