Captain America

Brian McBride was officially named as Club Captain yesterday. I have no complaints about that, Brian has been a real trooper since he joined us and certainly leads by example. The use of the term Club Captain however suggests Lawrie will not have any compunction to start with McBride if he doesn't want to which I reckon shows that LS believes he has a lot of natural leaders throughout the team.

One of those natural leaders is Aaron Hughes, and it also emerged that he picked up an injury in the QPR friendly that could keep him out for around six weeks. That's a bad thing. With no obvious sign that we're any closer to signing that elusive "experienced" centre back a lot of weight was on Hughes' shoulders to ensure he led the back line. Without him we're basically back to the same players that failed Chris Coleman last year. I don't mean that unduly harshly as I still rate a lot of those players, but as a unit they definitely failed to perform. My money's on Zat and Boca starting, but both Pearcey and Christanval made an appearance (if only on the bench) at QPR so may still be in the running.

No official confirmation from Fulham that we have signed Leijer the 21 year old Aussie centre back. It was mentioned on TFI that he was at Motspur Park yesterday afternoon for the medical so we should hear something today.

Finally the Reserves took on Aldershot in their final friendly on Tuesday night. Yet again this match was shrouded in mystery as far as the Fulham website was concerned but the Shots site says they "rounded off their pre-season preparations with a 1-1 draw against a strong Fulham side at the Recreation Ground. Lewis Chalmers gave The Shots an early lead but it was cancelled out a short time later when the Cottagers equalised from a spot kick". So there you go. I really don't understand why Fulham have refused to advertise the reserve fixtures or provide any news off the players involved or how they got on. I can't believe it's a football decision and am left to assume it's just another symptom of the shoddy website management.