Friday snippets

Catching up with things that have happened since my last "news" post.

Fulham 3 Leicester City 2 - Good to see Roy playing a full strength side for this game. I know we've got almost three weeks until our next match but I believe he would have fielded a similar 11 anyway. It's easy for managers to claim they're going to take the cups seriously and still field weaker sides. I genuinely believe Roy sees the cups as important matches and we will see near enough full strength sides while we remain in contention. Reports suggest we got away with the result, in a see-saw game that was remarkably similar to the 4-3 victory in the 2006 FA Cup. Whatever the performance it's a great result, Leicester are still a decent side, and to get through at the first attempt is a bonus. Third round draw is on Saturday.

Players leaving - As the end of the transfer window draws near Roy has continued to "streamline" the squad. Can't really argue with these decisions as none of the players were likely to feature in the match day squad.

• Steven Davis completed his £3million move to Rangers. He's a decent player who out of all the Sanchez signings would have appeared to fit the Hodgson requirements best, but was never going to be happy with just being a squad member.


• David Healy has joined (and already scored) for Sunderland. He will now, inevitably, score the winning goal when Sunderland visit us at the Cottage. It seems a shame that we never really got to see what he could do, a victim of circumstance to some extent. Too much of an enigma to fit into Roy's style I suspect.


• Eddie Johnson has gone to Cardiff for a season long loan. I'm not ready to give up on him quite yet, though he hardly endeared himself to the Welsh fans on his debut.


• Moritz Volz also moves out on a season long loan to Ipswich Town. I think this could be a great move for Volzy and wish him the very best. As last season proved, a year is a very long time in football, so maybe we've not seen the last of him yet.

Finally another shockingly poor photo to add to my portfolio of crap pictures taken with my phone. My early arrival on Saturday was timed perfectly to capture injured new boy Andy Johnson walking into the ground. The camera on my phone really isn't that bad, it just doesn't have a cover over the lens and therefore takes a bit of a pounding in my pocket with the loose change and fluff. I've got a new camera now which will be much better and I'll take that along to a game soon. Ken Coton - watch out!

Good Links, Not Recent

A few items of news and interest I wanted to catch up on, a lot of which is probably old news.

Several of our Reserve players have gone out on loan recently. Wayne Brown has joined Robert Milsom at Brentford which I hope will have a good impact on his development. Brown has shown this season that he's on the verge of first team football and a spell playing league football must surely do him good.

Following earlier spells at Darlington and AFC Wimbledon, young goalkeeper Corrin Brooks-Meade has joined Southern League Premier Division side Cheshunt on loan for one month. I've seen Corrin play for the reserves, and whilst he didn't stand out he looked comfortable. Without degenerating the clubs involved, his loans do seem to be dropping down the divisions in an alarming manner but that may be down to the difficulties of getting a game at any level in such a key position.

Jari Litmanen has recovered from his heart flutter and is apparently ready to be considered for the first team. Roy seems confident he could play a significant part when called upon "If we were down to ten players then there's no question he'd play and I have no doubt he'd play the 90 minutes and be running as much at the end as in the beginning".

Alexandra Leggat is the daughter of Fulham legend Graham and has written a lovely piece about Johnny Haynes which was brought to my attention by LBNo.11 on the TIFF messageboard. Alexandra is a published author and was amazed by the response the post received.

Whilst I was randomly searching for the links to Alexandra's blog I stumbled across this site with a couple of Fulham related pieces. A bit about the loss to Arsenal which includes a interview with a Fulham fan about the highs and lows of following the club and an interview with "From St. Andrews to Craven Cottage" author Morgan Philips. Both worth a read if you're interested.

Old news round up

Catching up on some of the news that's been touted about this week.

The Daniel Cousin move is not quite dead yet, but it does seem as though the player has resigned himself to staying in Glasgow until the summer. This was always a bit of an odd move as we managed to bring in Nevland, Litmanen and Johnson during January and also saw the return of McBride from injury. We've still got Kamara and Healy which means a total of six strikers already. I'm guessing that had the Cousin's deal gone through we'd have probably seen Healy move out on loan (in fact this may still happen) but even so I'm not sure exactly what he adds to our squad.

Coincidently Steven Davis has been doing well at Glasgow Rangers but is still wanted back at Fulham in the summer. I think this is good news as he is still a relatively young player and could well prove to be a good signing for us. I think he suffered from our lack of a more defensively minded partner to play alongside and was surprised when Roy offloaded him just as we signed just such a player (Leon Andreasen). I suspect his future at Fulham will be decided to some extent by what division we end in in next season, but at least he's got a chance to prove his worth away from the rough and tumble of a relegation scrap.

Young reserves star Robert Milsom seems to have impressed so far in his loan spell at Brentford. It looks like they are keen to extend his loan until the end of the season which can only be a good thing for his development.

Finally long standing injury victim Simon Elliott and new signing Eddie Johnson made appearances for the reserves in a 2-0 loss at West Ham on Wednesday night. EJ completed 60 minutes before a planned substitution (which may hint at a place in Saturday's squad) whilst Elliott lasted the full 90 minutes.