A YEAR IN A DAY
Our Guys in SW6 fortsätter att dela med sig av sina funderingar. Dags att släppa fram Daniel för att berätta om den senaste tiden.
Where to begin? It has been a bit of a whirlwind month, with the rat race of west London left behind during a late February break that left me away from Loftus Road for our thrilling three-goal victory over West Brom and unable to hear Neil Garnett’s legendary phone call. It was while I was away that the phone calls for the Cottage story came through, but in Hammersmith where the response was drafted. One of the problems at Fulham, now a shadow of the community club I first went to ten years ago, is that there is a lack of communication. As Bruce Langham suggested there is "an open season" on Fulham in the media, but the club are the architects of their own downfall. Sitting in Fleet Street, Canary Wharf or in a terraced dwelling in West London, the problems of getting through to someone who might tell you something you don’t already know are well known.
This is why stories such as the Steve Finnan and Sean Davis revelations are published. Langham might have rejected that the club has plans to sell their best players, but then the club did tell us we were going back to the Cottage and look what happened to that. Liverpool have made a bid of £4m which was deemed too low (rightly, in my opinion, by the powers-that-be at Craven Cottage – or wherever they know base themselves now). Gerard Houllier will come back, though, and the transfer of Finnan, who was signed for around £500,000 from Notts County five years, is expected to go through in the summer. It is interesting to note that Langham made no mention in his statement on the official website on Friday that Fulham had paid £250,00 to County to settle a sell-on clause agreed in Finnan’s transfer back in 1998. And how do I know all this? Well, that would be telling, wouldn't it?
The Sean Davis situation is a little more sketchy and dependent on if, buts and maybes, like so much else in life (like the war on Iraq – but don’t get me started on that). Davis made his debut against Cambridge under Micky Adams and is unrecognisable now from the player who I watched from the Hammersmith End tiptoe on the periphery of things. The resurgence of the local lad is down to Jean Tigana, whose coaching skills are undoubted, and he has found himself in the company of Messrs. Beckham, Scholes and Dyer in England training sessions recently. Davis holds Tigana in high regard and vice versa – which is why Tigana didn’t do more than discipline the player after he was caught drink driving in 2001 – and so should the Frenchman leave the club in the summer when his contract expires in the summer, Davis is likely to follow the French legion out of the club.
I have to disagree with Neil about the Craven Cottage issue, though. As I said in my last piece, the outsider might regard the Cottage as a bit of dump and not very aesthetically pleasing. But watching football there is an experience that cannot be bettered. The acoustics, the ripples of applause, the intimacy, the winding river, the blinding sunsets, the smell of Stevenage Road anticipation, the Crabtree congregation and the post-match inquest at the Chancellors … need I go on? That experience cannot be replicated – it is the reason why many of became Fulham supporters. Without Craven Cottage the old Fulham – with Macedo, Cohen, Haynes, Robson, Jezzard, Leggatt, Best and Marsh – would be divorced from those who are striving to following in their footsteps. And this is why a committed group of supporters meet every week to try and find a way back home – because the Cottage experience can’t be recreated by the bustling Uxbridge Road, with rough pavements and crazy drivers or by being an unwelcome squatter in your neighbour’s front room. Contray to the popular myth, the Back to the Cottage group is radical only because we want Fulham to be the best advertisement for football in the country, at the best location in the country.
The last thing anybody wants to do is drive out Mohammed Al-Fayed. The man might not have saved the club (this again is a popular myth – the club were going along fine at the top of the Third Division with the best young boss in Britain who is about to take Leicester into the top flight), but he bankrolled our surge through the divisions. The Back to the Cottage group recognise that he is the only man who could get us back to our traditional home, but there is no point in misunderstanding him and painting him as the evil exploiter of gullible fans. He wants to be loved – just like the rest of us – but risks destroying the special bond between the fans and Mo.
Get to the point, I hear you cry. Well, after luckily nicking the points off Sunderland thanks to a late Saha header from equally impressive Stolcers centre, Southampton were the next visitors to Loftus Road. Saturday came and I waited for the Back to the Cottage leaflets, advertising the formation of the Supporters’ Trust and the choice between a future at the top table (Charlton style) or exile (like Wimbledon in Milton Keynes), to arrive. There was time for a chat with David Lloyd, editor of There’s Only One F in Fulham (TOOFIF), the Fulham fanzine, and a chinwag with a school friend. A flick through the new TOOFIF and there was ‘The Cottage is a part of me’. Surely I've had more than 15 minutes of fame now, Andy? The leaflets were well received and had been spread around the ground, with the general consensus being in favour of a return to our home. It had been a positive couple of hours. But, the disquiet amongst the fans, was evident in the first half of the match.
Normally, the start of the game is greeted with encouragement, cheers and songs galore. But the only noise came from the School End, populated by the lively Saints fans, who taunted us to the tune of ‘Sh** team, No Ground,’ and watched their team enjoy the better possession for 35 minutes. They had little in the way of shots on goal to test our full debutant Martin Herrera, whose nervous juggling of high crosses, made him perhaps even more of a liability than the 'dinosaur' Andy Melville, who – believe it or not – had a steady game in central defence.
Fulham, and the fans, sprung into life in the last ten minutes of the first half. Marlet should have scored with a downward header that took an age to reach Antti Niemi’s fingertips and trickle agonisingly behind. Niemi was inspired in the Southampton goal but he was beaten by a moment of world class finishing from the magical Louis Saha. Steed Malbranque, as creative as ever, delivered a low cross which was flicked into the far corner by a brilliant overhead kick. That silenced the Saints. Marlet should have doubled the lead in stoppage-time when through on goal, but his tame shot was pushed away by Niemi.
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