Cookie Watch # 4

With not much Fulham news to talk about so far this week I thought I'd try and catch up with how Chris Coleman was getting on in Spain. There's also a few bits of general football trivia I picked up on this week, and news of how I got on at the Touch Rugby yesterday (yes, it really IS a slow news week!).

Following Real Sociedad's second home defeat at the hands of Poli Ejido, and having gone out of the Copa del Ray at the first hurdle, Cookie was starting to feel the pressure last week. Chris called for patience from the supporter’s as his young team were going to take time to gell. This was always going to be the case as, despite losing several players in the summer (including Javier Garrido to Man City and Mikel Alonso to Bolton) Coleman was only able to add one player (David Vaughan) to the group of Spanish youngsters he had inherited.

Thankfully a 3-2 victory away at Las Palmas has helped make Sociedad’s position look a little healthier. They are now sitting 11th in the league after four games. Las Palmas were the team that knocked Sociedad out of the Copa del Ray a few weeks back so it seems that things are improving. Sociedad’s next game is on Saturday at home to Elche, who have a similar record so far and sit one place below RS in the league. Incidently, I reckon if Cookie makes it to the end of this season my knowledge of second division Spanish football teams is going to be second to none!

Coleman has continued to write his weekly postcards for the Daily Mail. They don't actually say a great deal but this weeks postcard number 6 covers his relief in getting a win and David Vaughan’s continuing good form. In postcard number 5, he talks about the Cup disaster and provides links to all the previous postcards in case you missed any.

A couple of bits of general football news that caught my eye this week. In their re-played Carling Cup tie, that had been previously abandoned due to the serious illness of Clive Clarke, Leicester allowed Nottingham Forest to score straight from the kick-off to re-establish the score in the previous game. I think this is an amazing piece of sportsmanship and whole heatedly applaud it, well done Leicester. The fact they then went on to win the game 3-2 shows that Karma really can pay you dividends.

Last weekend there were five Africans in Portsmouth's line up against Liverpool (Kanu, Utaka, Muntari, Diop & Benjani). Surely that can’t be a good thing for them come January/February and the African Nations Cup? I guess they won't lose all of them but that's still a sizeable chunk of their first team squad. Typically we play them in November and May so won't benefit from it anyway.

Finally my Touch Rugby competition went really well. Both our teams got through to the semi-finals and I managed to score two tries for the B-side before we were soundly thrashed by the eventual winners. A good day out even if I am now walking very slowly and finding any sort of movement painful.