Reserves Draw, Academy Lose, Paper Talk

The reserves travelled up to Pride Park on Monday night to take on Derby County. A more familiar looking team, first teamers are clearly excused these sorts of trips, managed a creditable 1-1 draw against a strong Derby side that featured Giles Barnes, Jon Macken, Craig Fagan and Andy Todd. The Offal report is here and there's a decent report from the Derby site here.

The under-18 academy team played their "home" match on Saturday at Arsenal, where they lost 3-1. There's a report on Arsenal.com, though scant details of our side. The Arsenal goals came from a Nacer Barazite hatrick. He's a decent player who I think may have featured for their reserves against us last season.

Liam's been having a pop at Sanchez. Sentana report Liam as stating “It was my choice to leave Fulham to move to Reading, sometimes you don’t get on with the manager and everyone knows me and Lawrie didn’t see eye-to-eye. He tried to make it into a playing issue like I wasn’t good enough, but that was never the case. I found that hard. I was upset and surprised. For Lawrie to talk about the team conceding certain goals and putting my name to it was pretty disrespectful and I want to prove to people I’m a better defender than that. Steve Coppell is the right guy to take me on to the next level because he has great experience as a manager and a player”. Personally I think Liam would be better off letting his football do the talking.

Who Ate All The Pies kick a man when he's down with a poll to decide if Chris Baird is the worst player in the Premier League. It was pretty close when I last checked, but Chris was just edging it thanks to the likes of Titus Bramble and Danny Collins.

Finally the Telegraph do a bit of a hatchet job on LS, though slightly shoot themselves in the foot by claiming that "it took 42 minutes for [V.I.P. guest and Formula One team owner] Flavio Briatore to be treated to some high-octane action, and even then it was not at Fulham's instigation" before going on to acclaim David James as Man of the Match for keeping a clean sheet and making 11 saves. We must have squeezed 11 efforts into the last 3 minutes of the first half then 'cos I don't remember James making many saves in the second half.