Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Stand by your man-ager

Sometimes it's not individual games that highlight a problem but a cumulative effect over a number of matches. The 1-0 loss at West Brom was individually no worse than losing at Hull on the opening day or losing to West Ham last week. But coming, as it did, on the back of three straight league defeats (and four in total) it became a more significant event. The Blackburn game could be explained by a little bit of misfortune in the last few minutes, the West Ham game by a five minute period of chaos. Add them all together though and they start to point towards a more serious problem. We've had a healthy share of possession in these games and can even claim to have been a bit "unlucky" at times but we're not claiming points.

Despite this I'm happy to trust that Roy is doing the right things and these will eventually lead to the team getting it right on the pitch. I'm possibly helped in this by an acceptance that being relegated from the Premier League wouldn't cause me any serious anguish. I'd resigned myself to our fate last season, before the miracle of Kamara turned things around, and it seems to have stuck with me this season. Supporting Fulham has never been about chasing success or winning trophies for me. I'd love us to do well, I want us to make a bigger effort in the cup, but dropping down a division no longer holds any dread. We'd just get the chance to have another go, begin a different stage of the Fulham F.C. adventure. There are some problems with the side, I doubt there'll ever be a time when there aren't, but I'm content in the knowledge that Roy can see them as clearly as I can and will be working out what he can do about rectifying them. We've got a couple of weeks off until the next league game, and unusually I think this might help us out a little. It gives Roy a chance to assess his options and see what changes he can make to re-focus the team.

I want to see Fulham move away from the cycle of hiring and firing managers at regular intervals. I think I've talked about this before but in general successful teams have managers that have been with their clubs for a long time. Every club wants to find their Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger and I think Roy could be that man for us - I don't think we're realistically going to find much better - and I'm going to stand by him until the end (bitter or otherwise).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A very philosophical report on our team and its situation and whilst I am in agreement with your reasons for supporting FFC one has to acknowledge the fact that these days there is much more emphasis on finance, and the amount our chairman has seen fit to invest (whilst not on the level of Man U. or Arsenal)is perhaps the reason we have survived in the Premiership as long as we have, and he will want to see a return on his investment, which he has a greater chance of doing while we stay there!
I cannot see how we can have such large percentages of the game, playing some very attractive football, without being able to score goals. So often we should have been 2 & 3 goals up before our opponents even got their first - pretty football doesn't always get the results that some basic hard work achieves, look at Hull City. No criticism of them but it just shows what can be done even without a lot of cash behind them.
I hope you're right and that Roy can inspire our lads to take the advantages their football provides.
Chopper's Dad

Anonymous said...

Yes, of course you're right about our lack of a cutting edge, and that's something we need to improve. This was more of a response to the doom and gloom being spouted on the message boards. Johnson & Zamora have only played about 2 1/2 games together, I'm still hopeful that once they've got a few more games under their belts we'll see a big difference.