New Signings a-go-go

Lots of activity being reported around Fulham today. I will do a proper introduction to each one as they get confirmed, but for now here's the highlights.

Genuine Football legend Jari Litmanen is already training with Fulham. Whilst no mention is made of us actually signing him, Roy Hodgson is quoted as saying he could help with our fight against relegation.

We have completed the signing of 24 year old defensive midfielder Leon Andreasen from Werder Bremen.

Glasgow Rangers have accepted our bid of £3Million for striker Daniel Cousin, and the player is travelling down to Motspur Park for a medical tomorrow.

Marlon King's future seems to be in doubt following the news that his medical revealed a problem with his knees that may be inoperable. Thanks to Rich at CCN for this link. It sounds like Watford are playing hardball regarding his price and the fact that we have already moved to sign other strikers suggest Marlon could find himself in limbo which is very sad.

There's a number of other rumours flying around but FulhamWeb suggest we are close to bringing in South Korean striker Cho Jae-jin.

All good stuff. It's kicked off down at the Mem, currently still 0-0. Jimmy Bullard's started, so has young reserves star Wayne Brown, and Aaron Hughes might be playing as a defensive midfielder.

I Heard It Through The Grapevine

With feelings running high following last Saturday’s desperate defeat there has clearly been a shift in the number of supporters now agreeing Sanchez’ time is up. That's added fuel to speculation on the message boards that the club are already lining up a replacement. The Internet is a powerful medium, and past experience has shown that much of the goings on at many football clubs are accurately reported unofficially. The problem is for every true rumour you read there are probably 50 false ones.

Posters on The Fulham Independent speculated early in the week that Jean Tigana was in the crowd for the Newcastle game. A photo was found that seemed to prove JT’s presence a few rows in front of Al Fayed. This may not seem like much but if true would suggest a seismic shift in stance between both men. The fallout from JT’s sacking was pretty hefty leading to litigation and lengthy court proceedings. Having seen the relationship between Tigger and MAF turn so acrimonious it was hard to believe we'd see him back at the club at any capacity other than opposition manager. The photo is not conclusive but it does look a lot like Tigana, and if so suggests a definite reconciliation between the two men. Coincidentally, I’ve been thinking about the Tigana years a lot recently. The last few months under him were difficult but I strongly believe that under Tigana we would at least be trying to play good football. We might not always win, and surviving in the Premiership would be no less certain than it is now but we'd be better placed to come back should the worst happen.

Prior to this exciting piece of news my leading contender for replacing LS was Martin Jol. I like him a lot, he's a bit of a character and, I believe, a good coach. Like Tigana I feel he’d get us playing decent football again and would be good for our long term development as a team. My biggest problem with the Sanchez era is my lack of confidence in his ability to develop our team in the right way. I have no proof of that, it’s based on gut feeling and some fairly minor things that have happened so far. However, having reached that conclusion it’s hard to shake off and, when coupled with our poor run of form, is probably magnified out of proportion. Jol had previously talked about being keen to stay in England and the Premier League. This seemed to add credence to a suggestion some time ago that he was being lined up to replace Sanchez. However this week Jol came out with a flat denial that he was interested in the job, stating that he did not want to be involved with a team in a relegation fight.

In between the speculation there was some good news in the shape of returning cult hero Jimmy Bullard. JB played for the Reserves against Reading where he completed 60 minutes and scored a goal. Great news for Jimmy who must have begun to wonder whether he would ever play again, and great news for the club. I’m sure his recovery has a long way still to go. However desperate our need for a player of his calibre we must make sure his return to full league football is managed at a sensible pace. Having been out for so long it would be foolish to rush him back into first team football. But still very good news.

Today it’s all kicked off on The Independent Fulham Forum with the news that John Collins has resigned from Hibernian. People “in the know” are suggesting that Sanchez had been dragged off the training ground for show down talks with MAF and was soon to be fired with Jean Tigana returning as Director of Football and John Collins becoming the new manager. I am ridiculously excited about this and have been trying to calm myself down since first reading it. For me the Tigana/Collins combination is a dream team that would mean a return to classy passing football and genuine development of young talent. I would feel the club was back in safe hands and we could enjoy the football again whatever our final position in this years Premiership.

It’s all just rumour though. No actual facts. We’ll have to wait and see.

Whatever happens, I can’t wait for the Wigan game.

Transfer rumour round-up

I'm a sucker for a bit of transfer rumour mongering and there's been an increase in these recently as we approach the next spending window.

It seems Fulham really want Burnley's lanky Northern Irish centre forward Kyle Lafferty with a price of £3M now being talked about. I can understand the interest in Lafferty, who has already shown he can combine well with Healy, but I am concerned that we're spending too much on a player with no top flight experience. We desperately need a big centre forward, whether McBride is fit to play or not. I'm keen on Nikola Zigic who may be available having struggled to impose himself at Valencia (sorry about the music in the following clip - turn the sound down).



We're also keen (and there's been quite a few rumours to suggest this is a "done deal" already) on West Ham's Bobby Zamora. I like Zamora. He's a hard working forward who gets his share of the goals, but again, with a reported fee of £3-5M, wonder if this is the best use of our transfer fund. Lawrie may be thinking ahead to the African Nations Cup and the loss of Zamora.

Finally, CravingSuccess.co.uk (a Fulham fan site I'd not seen before) suggest that we are interested in both Chris Gunter (Cardiff RB) and Wayne Hennessey (Wolves keeper). Both players are Welsh which makes me wonder if that is what Sanchez REALLY meant by saying "we will probably cast the net wider [this window]". Hennessey has been linked before and it makes sense that we'd be looking at new 'keepers. We've also been linked to Joe Aylon at Port Vale. I've not heard of Chris Gunter before but can't see that signing another ex-Championship right back is going to help us out in that position. CravingSuccess.co.uk looks a little too much like Vital Football to me but might be worth keeping an eye on.

Deadline day rumour round-up

Final post of my deadline day catch up and a number of articles that were reported during the last few days.

Gabriel Zakuani has joined Stoke City on another season long loan.

Daniel Ljuboja, who was reported as being on trial with us, apparently failed to agree terms with Fulham and Derby County before Friday night's transfer deadline. He is now back in Germany with VFB Stuttgart.

The young Ghanaian midfielder Daniel Owusu was unable to continue with his scholarship at the club due to work permit problems. He has now penned a three-year contract with Germinal Beerschot where he will continue his development with Fulham's Belgian partnership club. This deal with Beerschot has been mentioned before although I've not seen anything official to confirm that it exists. It's a good name though!

Released Fulham striker Tomasz Radzinski has signed for Greek club Xanthi on a two-year contract.

Reading boss Steve Coppell admits he was disappointed to lose Seol Ki-Hyeon on Friday to Fulham. Coppell said: "It has been obvious for some time that he wanted to move on. I would have loved him to stay but only if he was fully committed to us and I don't think he would have been. I had to make a decision and a decision has been made". On the signing of Liam, Coppell adds "Rosenior was at a dead end there and was part of an exchange offer put to us. He's an under-21 defender and can add to what we have. He was a player who wanted to come here. That was important. We need players who are here by choice rather than here by force". The mention of Rosenior being at a dead end maybe adds some truth to the rumour that Liam's departure was not entirely related to football matters.

Shrews, Claus, Transfer Rumours and Cookie

So, after a wonderfully sunny Bank Holiday weekend, spent at my Dad’s in the perennially sunny Little Common, there seems to be a lot to catch up on.

We travel to Shrewsbury tonight for the second round of the Carling Cup. I imagine we’ll have to field a fairly strong side due to our injury situation, and this could prove to be a good thing with a number of those players benefiting from an extra game. Keller will certainly appreciate another 90 minutes in goal ahead of Saturday’s crucial Premiership fixture against Spurs. With Baird suspended after his red card at Villa it might also give Moritz Volz a chance to fine tune his ability to maintain a high line. Zat might also be missing (see news story below). The Shrews, managed by ex-Fulham favourite Gary Peter’s, got off to a good start to the season winning their first two matches but lost 3-0 to Franchise F.C. at the weekend. They also have a brand new stadium so this will be our first match at the appropriately named New Meadow. Disappointingly there is no need for a man in a coracle any more. My only visit to previous ground Gay Meadow was for an F.A. Cup third round replay in 1996. Interestingly before that game we visited a small pub just round the corner from the ground that was the first (and then only) non-smoking pub in the town, how things change! We went with high hopes and took a first half lead through Rory Hamill (who I think got himself sent off later in the game) but then saw Shrewsbury fight back to win 2-1. I think we were a division below them back then, so a result would have been seen as a good scalp, let’s hope we avoid that happening to us tonight.

Claus Jensen has announced his retirement from Football. There's more on TOOFIF and
Sky Sports. I’m quite sad to hear this. Claus was undoubtedly a very talented player but his problems with injuries since joining Fulham prevented him from making the impact I’d hoped he would. Even at his best I always though he was a luxury player as you really needed two decent defensive midfielders behind him but good memories include his home debut a 2-0 win against Bolton, his extra time appearance, scoring the final goal and orchestrating a win against Derby in the forth round of the 2005 F.A. Cup, and, the last time I saw him, playing for the reserves against Arsenal in April.

The BBC report that Aston Villa are ready to seal a £4m deal for Zat Knight. Can’t say I’d be happy in losing one of our few fit CB’s but guess this means we have someone else lined up. Villa are also still interested in Liam Rosenior who The Sun say is available for around £2m.

This week is bound to be busy with the transfer window closing on Friday and we have apparently got Stuttgart striker Daniel Luboja on trial. Amongst other similar “needing a big front man” stories it’s The People that plump for the obvious and claim that Fulham are lining up a bid for Monaco's 6’ 7½” Czech striker Jan Koller. Despite stories that midfielder Thomas Gravesen is set to snub an attempt to take him on loan from Celtic, both Sky and the BBC report that we have confirmed our interest.

We have also been linked with a bid for young Port Vale ‘keeper Joe Anyon, with an initial bid of £250,000 rejected by the club. We’ve upset the Vale manager Martin Foyle in doing so though. The Vale boss is incensed with the way Sanchez has behaved claiming “Managers deal with managers and I am disappointed with Lawrie Sanchez. I will be phoning him. They made an offer and then have pulled out straight away. Then they have signed Kasey Keller and straight afterwards it was 'Oh we'll be back for Joe Anyon'”. It doesn’t sound like the way we’d normally do business so we’ll see. It does sound like it wouldn’t take much more to sign Anyon who may be seen as a better prospect for a backup keeper in the long term.

Finally in a mini Cookie watch. Real Sociedad lost their first game of the season 0-2 at home to CD Castellon. In his post match interview Chris Coleman spoke of how nervous his players were after conceding in the first half, and that the second goal scored early in the second half forced them to chase the game. There’s also the third Postcard from San Sebastian in the Daily Mail. It’s definitely going to be a long hard season for Chris, I hope he gets the time he’ll need to turn things around.

Cookie Watch #3 and other news

The Spanish season is now very close to starting and Chris Coleman has made his first signing for Real Sociedad. Perhaps unsurprisingly it is another welsh man, David Vaughan the 24 year old Crewe Alexandra winger.

A couple of great articles from the Times that were pointed out to me by my American friend BQ. Coleman embraces new challenge and Outsider Coleman feels home at last. There's also been another Postcard from San Sebastian in the Mail and this article on the BBC. This suggests to me that there is going to be a lot of media interest in how Cookie performs. The odds are hugely stacked against him, with very little money and the need to rely on home grown Basque talent, but I suspect the British media are actually going to be quite supportive of him.

There's been an increase in rumours following Saturday's disaster with a number of players being linked with moves in and out of the club. With ten days remaining of the transfer window it's always an edgy time and if some of the rumours are true then it's concerning that we might be letting players move on at a time when our squad appears to be thinner than we might have hoped. Richard covers all of this very well on Craven Cottage Newsround.

Brian McBride may or may not need surgery on his knee, either way he is going to be out for at least three months. This means we are looking for another striker who can be strong in the air and hold the ball up for the likes of Healy and Kamara. Maybe it's Kyle Lafferty but that could just be another lazy Northern Ireland link. Papa Bouba Diop has apparently been given the go ahead to leave Fulham and is being linked with a move to either Portsmouth or Newcastle. If The Wardrobe does go it will leave us light in central midfield, the (rarely reliable) News of the World suggest that PSG's Sammy Traore, who can also play centre back, may fill the void.

Secret friendlies and scurrilous rumours

Fulham reserves played another "secret" friendly, behind closed doors at Motspur Park, against Brentford on Wednesday afternoon. We lost 1-0. Not much information from the Fulham perspective but the Brentford website ran a short report in which they say very little about Fulham. It does looks like, former FFC wonderkid, Paul Brooker featured for the Bees. According to TFI Liam Rosenior featured in the Fulham side and played well. Really not sure what to read in to that though. It must be better to be playing football than not but generally we don't use many first teamers in the reserves side.

Chatting with my friends during the Bolton game, we were all a bit surprised that there had been no news of Radzinski or Jensen since they were released. I've been googling a bit today to see if there was any news. According to the BigSoccer forum Tomasz Radzinski was spotted near Elland Road and was talking with Leeds United about a potential contract. Elsewhere there have been a few reports linking Claus Jensen with a move to a Spanish La Liga club (not Real Sociedad!) or failing that a return back home to Denmark.

Finally the Hyypia to Fulham rumour has been gaining credence, though maybe just by the number of times it's been repeated. We have been linked with Sami Hyypia on and off for the best part of two years now, so I remain enormously sceptical that it is ever going to happen. In theory Hyypia is exactly what we've been looking for since we lost Coleman to injury but there remains the concern that he could be past his best. However, he still managed 24 league appearances for the Reds last season and played the full match as they beat Toulouse 1-0 yesterday afternoon.

Green Eyed Loco-Man

When did I become a news site? I'm sure I didn't used to try and write quite so much about what had happened during the day. Maybe it's because I am posting at the end of the day instead of in the morning. Whatever. Here is the news.

Michael Brown has finally completed his move to Wigan, the Official website said this was for an undisclosed fee (we really love those don't we - I wonder if we're laundering money for the Mafia?), but the BBC (amongst others) reported it was for £3million. If that's true it's an even better price than I first thought, though I'm sure there are actually all sorts of clauses in there before we'd get the full wedge. Good luck Browny.

Roy O'Donovan looks to have decided he would rather play for Sunderland. He was quoted today as saying Roy Keane was his idol and he always hoped that one day he would get the chance to play for him. Fair enough, you can't really compete with that can you? Sunderland played Cork last night in a friendly so that must also have helped them jump in and hijack our deal. All things considered it's not the worst deal to have been gazumped on, given the choice I'd rather have signed Chris Baird so I think we've come out ahead so far in comparison to the Black Cat's. I'll be interested to see how O'Donovan does though, definitely one to watch.

Following Sanchez's comments about signing 2-3 more players we've also been linked with a number of new signings. We've allegedly made bids for Charles N'Zogbia of Newcastle and Seol Ki-Hyeon of Reading. N'Zogbia is a nippy left winger who looked pretty tasty in the glimpses I saw of him playing for Newcastle last year. I'd be surprised if Big Sam was prepared to let him go, especially considering his comments about their dearth of players, but it has also been rumoured that Sam wants Diop as part of the deal. Seol ripped us apart when we played Reading away last season, but generally didn't get as many opportunities in the side as he'd hoped. I had read that he'd been played out of position a lot which could explain his subsequent dip in form, so he might not be a bad signing for us especially for £1million. There's was also a suggestion back in June that our new Korean sponsors LG were keen for us to have a Korean player on board so there may be more to the move than just squad strengthening.

Finally I completely forgot about the rumour from yesterday that we were looking at Anthony Le Tallec. He is owned by Liverpool, but spent the whole of last season on loan at Sochaux and the whole of the previous one on loan st Sunderland. Neither club subsequently picked him up, which doesn't bode well, however, he has been described as a tall forward who can hold the ball up well. If true he could well be useful as a back up to Brian McBride. With Kamara looking to feed off a big front man McBride has a big role to play this season and we don't seem to have another striker who can offer the same attributes. Either way its all rumour and hearsay so far so we'll have to wait and see.

Repetition

Bit of a late post today as I had hoped to bring news of the confirmed signing of Roy O'Donovan. Roy was due at Motspur Park today for a medical but Roy Keane was reported on the BBC as making a late bid to take him to Sunderland instead. It was also reported by RTE (Irish radio station) that O'Donovan had NOT travelled to Fulham today as originally planned. I think it would be a great shame if we miss out on him, though it looks like the final decision will probably be down to the player. Interesting that we should find ourselves fighting over a second player in this window. We won through on Chris Baird so all may not yet be lost on this deal either. Come the season it will be interesting to see how we compare with Sunderland. You'd like to think we'll be finishing above them but they do have some serious backing and with Keano at the helm will surely have the media supporting them as well.

In other scurrilous rumour mongering. We were reported as having made a £4.2million bid for Hameur Bouazza of Watford. I got quite excited by this as I reckon he would be a very useful player for us. He's officially a striker, which would add another pacy forward to our set up, but can also play left (and possibly right) wing, which would provide us with additional cover where we currently only have Lee Cook. It does seem unlikely as only the other week Aidy Boothroyd was quoted as saying they would not let him go for anything other than a "head turning" bid, but maybe the player's desire to play in the Prem has come into play. I think the story originated in the Watford Observer so we'll just have to wait and see.

More ridiculously we have also been linked with a bid for Sean Davis. Allegedly we are looking for a replacement for Michael Brown, but I cannot imagine we actually need one with a decent set of central midfielders already in place. More to the point what sort of a reception would our former No. 23 get if he came back.

Finally Sanchez was interviewed on Radio 5 Live today in which he talked about making another 2-3 signings before the end of the window (be still my beating heart!) and also had this to say - "We're not going to win the Champions League, certainly not in the next three or four years, but we could get somewhere near a final," he said. "The fans obviously love the Premier League and that is obviously the mainstay, but I'd like to give the fans some day outs at major cup finals. "If other people aren't going to take it seriously, we certainly will. "And over the course of my time in charge at Fulham I'd like to think we'll be getting into Europe somehow, whether that be via the Intertoto, a cup final or our league position." Too bloody right Lawrie, if you can achieve that I think I might just love you forever!

Mr Sanchez gets to work

Two players already signed and with a flurry of rumours being reported it seems it won't be long before we've got more players through the door. Today Sky Sports have reported that Fulham lodged a £4Million bid for Henri Camara with Wigan. It seems Lawrie's not content to sit back and wait for other teams to agree to deals, £4Million is a very serious bid but it must also put some pressure on West Brom and Blackburn if they are seriously considering letting their players go. The Diomansy Kamara bid seems to hinge around Heidar's reluctance to move to WBA. I'd be amazed if we are genuinely contemplating signing both K/Camara's so I think the move for Henri must be down to an inability to agree a price for Diomansy. The bid of £2.5Million for Roberts has apparently been knocked back, with Blackburn looking for around £4Million. Maybe they also will reconsider the price if they think we're just going to move on and buy someone else. Either way I think it bodes well for Sanchez mode of practice. Under Coleman we'd be linked with players but rarely did we hear of genuine bids being made. Mo might be backing Lawrie more in his first year than Cookie but it does appear that Lawrie is more comfortable with wheeling and dealing for a number of players at the same time.

Whilst it does look like we'll be buying two speedy strikers fairly soon, the news on David Healy has been very quiet of late. Leeds are clearly in a mess at the moment, and maybe we can benefit by picking him up on the cheap near the end of the window. If we do though he'll be fighting with 5 or 6 other strikers unless we manage to move on some of the old guard. I don't think Healy will be a regular starter but I do think there's a place for him in the Sanchez plan.

Franck Queudrue has been vocal about his desire to leave. He's clearly not happy with the new manager and suggests this is down to the style of football we'll be playing. I reckon it might have more with his failure to put in a decent performance (though to be fair I think he was injured) once Sanchez took over. We've not really been linked with a left back at all so it's possible we might see Bocanegra or Rosenior have to fill the role. Aaron Hughes is capable of playing right back, and Chris Baird (who seems set to go to Sunderland but may still join us) is actually a right back capable of playing in the centre. Moritz Volz could also be on his way, with the news that Celtic are interested. It would be very sad to see him go, but you couldn't blame him if he did as he needs to be playing regular first team football. Finally I heard a rumour, from a Spurs fan who's not one to pull my leg, that Martin Jol may be looking at Liam Rosenior if the £12Million (That does say twelve!) bid from the Filth for Pascal Chimobonda goes through.

All quite exciting and it would seem that the team that starts this season will look very different from the one that started last.

New Signing - Steven Davis

Hurrah! Signing number 2 confirmed. Steven Davis (that's him above scoring against Man City) is 22 and generally a central midfielder. He came through the youth team at Aston Villa but despite his age has already made 102 appearances and scored 9 goals. He's also played 16 times for Northern Ireland, scoring once, and recently became his countries youngest captain standing in for our other new boy Aaron Hughes.

I think this is a great signing, he didn't get to feature as much last season as Martin O'Neil began to restructure his side, but in the 2005/2006 season he was voted Aston Villa Player Of The Season, Aston Villa Young Player Of The Season and Aston Villa Fans Player Of The Season. He's got good experience at this level and is still so young. I believe he has played in a wider role for Villa but I'm pretty certain Sanchez will want to use him down the middle. With Brown, Diop, Smertin, Bullard (soon) and potentially Dempsey (not to mention Simon Elliott!?) all vying for a central role I think it's likely we'll see someone shipped out too. Wigan have reportedly bid £2.5Million for Brown and maybe, as important he was for us at times last season, that might be worth considering. However, it's still not very clear where Alexey Smertin stands. He's not been seen since Coleman departed and there have been rumours that he doesn't get on with assistant manager Les Reed. Whatever the truth is I think at least one of those will now move on.

Koeman for Fulham? Simon Morgan moves on

Quite excited (probably overly so) by the news today the Ronald Koeman is interested in the Fulham job. The Daily Mirror has run with the story which is reproduced on FulhamWeb and is also mentioned on BBC Sports. I had a quick check on his managerial record and found that he's done OK if not spectacularly. Three Dutch league titles and a cup with Ajax and PSV plus one Portugese cup win with Benfica, I'm still excited though. I'm not completely opposed to Sanchez being given a go, I think he is single-minded and ambitious enough to actually do quite well as a Premier League manager, but I have been disappointed so far in what he has managed with the team he inherited. My biggest concern is that it will be players like Philippe Christanval who end up missing out under Sanchez as he looks for players who will just do what he wants.

Also this week I found out (thanks Dad!) that Simon Morgan has left the club. Apparently there was a piece in Saturday's programme that said he was moving on to a similar role with the Premier League. Morgs became the epitome for me of the Fulham side that dragged itself from the bottom division to the brink of the Prem. Good luck Simon, hope we'll see you back at the Cottage again soon.

UPDATE: Damn just as I hit publish there's an update from Bert Wijchen, a Dutch Fulham (and NEC Nijmegen) fan who regularly posts on TFi. He says "Ronald Koeman is staying at PSV Eindhoven; there was a terrible fight between him and the chairman because they lost almost a 11 points lead in the league but he will be for 100% staying there for one year" but "His brother Erwin left Feyenoord a couple of weeks ago and he is available. Feijenoord had a terrible season although it has not much to do with his manager skills but the lack of decent players.Erwin is a great guy; one of the people and Ronald has a more arrogant attitude". Oh well guess we'll just have to wait and see.