ONE YEAR IN A DAY - forts.
Fortsättningen på Daniel Crawfords senaste krönika.
By this time, two Fulham Customer Services’ employees had been ushered into the seats behind me. It appeared the club didn’t want the ground to look empty on The Premiership and filled the vacant seats with their willing workers. The two men, one of whom had stopped the away fans stealing an Adidas advert behind the goal in the first half, sniggered their way through the second-half with their Nescafes, telling me about Steve Marlet’s contract – which allegedly contains clauses guaranteeing him a place in the starting line-up when fit and ruling out his substitution.
The Whites came out to a patter-patter of applause after the break – it seemed the male voice choir in Ellerslie Road had taken a vow of silence. All of that was forgotten about when Saha’s clever dummies enginereed a bit of space for him to drive a cross through the six-yard box and it crept in off Michael Svensson’s shins and the noise returned. Fulham should have wrapped it up, but Marlet, Stolcers and Herrera had read the script. Fulham normally sacrifice two-goal leads against the Saints and so it proved. James Beattie headed in Matt Oakley’s corner ten minutes from time after Herrera had stayed glued to his line. It was uncharacteristic of the Colombian, whose afternoon had been punctuated by mad dashes from his box, such as the one to meet Beattie in the first half, when the England striker left his mark on our third-choice ‘keeper. Herrera might have caught a late drive from Oakley, but punched it into the Loft and Niemi charged into the Fulham box for the corner. It was fitting that he should lash a volley against the bar after the Whites had failed to clear, and even more apt that it should be Svensson who headed the loose ball into the unguarded net. Cue celebration and despair at the same time. Gordon Stratchan raced down the touchline like Ben Johnson, while Tigana turned his back on preceedings. You could hear the Saints supporters' singing victory songs long after the home fans had got off home. Where on earth did Paul Durkin find three minutes of injury time from, eh?
To be fair, Southampton deserved their point. They never gave up, but I for one am sick of the sight of Beattie, who has scored five goals in his last three games against Fulham. All of them could have been afforded if the defence was up to scratch and we would be five points better off. The singing of 'If Beattie played for England, so could I' was a little too cruel for even my liking, though. Football does definitely have a habit of producing the unexpected - like Blackburn doing the double over Arsenal, for instance.
The journey back was not without incident either. A man on his way home thought Marlet had played well – but not well enough to justify his £40,000 wage packet and those contract clauses of course. A mate and I saw the chairman’s car serve to avoid a pile-up on the Uxbridge Road – the chauffeur might have scratched the paintwork, though – and by the time I’d thought of giving Mo my last leaflet the chance was gone. By the time I’d reached my destination, a couple more Fulham friends had thought of a job for dear Steve. We shouldn’t waste the £11.5m, because he’d be much more useful filling in seats with Customer Services than on the pitch. Failing that, he could always sell the programmes, or Fultime and bark ‘Fulham Flutter’ into the Cottage air this time next season, couldn’t he? That really would be Fulhamish. Manchester United next week? Steed and Boa against the Nevilles and Melville versus van Nistelrooy should make for fun.
// Daniel Crawford
[Daniel Crawford är editor på London magasinet Sportscene, och skriver även exklusivt för ScandinavianWhitesOnline här på SvenskaFans.com.]
