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[Kevin Jewkilis]

Replaced the broken piece on my Fulham keychain today, so I figure it's time to start next year's thread.

2010-2011 Season Recap:

The big theme of last season was Bad Half/Good Half. Over the summer they hired Martin Jol away from Ajax Amsterdam, only for the team to refuse to let him out of the contract. They ended up signing Hughes right before the start of the season. They got off to a slow start. Then the Wolves broke Zamora's leg and the team imploded, falling to as far as 19th on the table at one point and entering the new year in the relegation zone. Then the good half happened: Hughe's adjustments started taking hold, Dempsey rose to the occasion as the team's top scorer, and Zamora returned as the team accumulated more points in the second half than all but 2 teams in the league. Come the end of the season, they finished in 8th, their second highest position in the history of the club. Their quest for the team's first-ever hardware fell short, as they were knocked out of the Carling Cup in the 3rd round at the FA cup in round 5 (a step back from last year's quarterfinal loss). The quest will continue, however, as they earned one of the last 3 spots in next year's Europa League on fair play rules (despite some alleged attempts to tank, accumulating more than a dozen cards in the last 3 matches including the only red card of the year).

What to watch for in 2011-2012:

Can they build on their momentum from the end of last season (with stable leadership and with a healthy squad)? While I don't have any illusions about whether they can compete for a title I'd love to see whether they can top the 7th place finish from two years ago. Based on the play from the second half of this season, it seems very possible.

The folks at Craven Cottage Newsround posted this analysis of Mark Hughes's approach against teams with differing talent levels. The argument is that Hodgson's closed game strategy helped them upset some of the big 4 clubs and may have served them well in their Europa league run. Hughes, on the other hand, plays an open game that helped them better dominate the less talented clubs but exposed them against the best teams in the league. The question becomes, can they continue to get the results against the chaff but not play like total shit against the ManU's and Chelseas (and, for that matter, the Atletico Madrids, Hamburgs, and Juventuses)?

Though Zamora is undoubtedly the team's best offensive weapon, Dempsey emerged as a force in his absence. What can the team do to take advantage of this 1-2 punch?

The schedule is going to be long and training period short. The Europa League qualifiers begin June 30 and run every week for the rest of the summer. While the team likely won't have to put up a real team against that competition,** it's still a lot of extra travel when the team could be training and added minutes for most of their starters. If they make it to the knock-out stage, that's 52 matches guaranteed plus the Carling and FA Cups. During their run to the Europa League final last year they played 63 matches, and all the extra play seemed to impact their play in the Premier League.



* Seriously, San Marino is the area of Quincy and has the population of Wellesley. And depending on how the drawing goes, we could have a match against their league champion.

Edited by Kevin Jewkilis, 14 December 2011 - 05:21 PM.

[Kevin Jewkilis]

And some news: Hughes is sending off John Pantsil and Zoltan Gera is leaving of his own accord. Both had greatly diminished playing time under Hughes, so they won't likely have a big impact on the team in the future.

[SoxFanInCali]

Looks like Hughes is leaving to take the Villa job.

[Kevin Jewkilis]

Can they build on their momentum from the end of last season (with stable leadership and with a healthy squad)? While I don't have any illusions about whether they can compete for a title I'd love to see whether they can top the 7th place finish from two years ago. Based on the play from the second half of this season, it seems very possible.

http://soccernet.esp...a-wait-in-wings

Fulham Football Club can confirm that Mark Hughes has provided notice, under the terms of his contract, to leave the club at the end of June. After discussions with Mark the club has agreed to accept this notice.

Their first match that counts this year is 4 weeks from today, so they don't have time for this to drag out the way it did last year. Martin Jol is at liberty; I wonder if they try to hire him again.

[teddykgb]

Why on earth does Hughes leave for Villa? How does that make any sense?

[Kevin Jewkilis]

Why on earth does Hughes leave for Villa? How does that make any sense?

I can't figure it out either, unless it's about money (though he insists that Villa hasn't made an actual offer). This move would have made sense in '07 or '08, but Villa seems to be heading in the wrong direction (with a -11 GD last year) and Fulham is improving. Hodgson moved the club forward, and this season showed that it wasn't a fluke; why not stay and try to push them even higher?

[Kevin Jewkilis]

Your daily Schadenfreude:

Mark Hughes will not be the new Aston Villa manager and has been left without a club after walking out on Fulham on Thursday night. The Welshman had been the favourite to succeed Gérard Houllier but Villa, unimpressed with the course of events that culminated in Hughes activating a break clause in his contract and leaving Fulham, have turned their attention elsewhere.

Villa's reluctance to move for Hughes comes as something of a surprise. He has been the frontrunner for the Villa post since it emerged this week that Houllier would be stepping down on health grounds. Villa, however, told Fulham that they would not be making an approach for Hughes in the hours before his decision to leave.

The Midlands club have since made it clear that their stance has not changed after Hughes's departure from Fulham. It is understood they would have grave reservations about appointing the former Blackburn Rovers and Manchester City manager because of how his departure from Fulham has been handled.

Between that and his shady "agent" Kia Joorabchian, I think Hughes has officially become the villain in a kids sports movie getting his comeuppance.

[Kevin Jewkilis]

I feel like I should quote some of the posts from a year ago about this. They finally got their man:

Fulham Football Club is delighted to announce the appointment of Maarten Jol as its new manager.

Maarten joins Fulham on an initial two year contract with the Club having an option to extend for a further year.

He will arrive at our Motspur Park training ground in advance of the players return to training later this month.

http://www.fulhamweb...am-manager.aspx

I was happy about this last year, and I'm happy about this now.

And who knows, maybe Ajax will get bumped from the Champions League late enough to be relegated to the Europa League and they'll play each other in a grudgematch...

[URI]

Jol is a really good manager, and players will run through a wall for him.

However, he's prone to being out managed by craftier chiefs.

And he might spend some cash on bringing Robbie Keane to Craven Cottage.

[Kevin Jewkilis]

Players cut by Jol:

Zoltan Gera, Diomansy Kamara, John Pantsil, Eddie Johnson, and Matthew Saunders


In other news, the draw for the first two Europa League qualifying rounds is Monday. Given the quality of the rest of the competition, the only bad draws would be the two Icelandic clubs, those from the former Soviet Union, and the two Israeli clubs. (Not that any of those teams would pose a challenge, but you can hope for less travel. Hopefully they'll get at least one of the three teams in Ireland and Northern Ireland.)

[Kevin Jewkilis]

No San Marino, but not a bad pair of draws in terms of travel: NSI Runavik of the Faroe Islands (home 6/30, away 7/7) followed by Belfast's Crusaders (away 7/14, home 7/21). Neither team has ever won an international tournament match.

The draw for the third qualifying round is 7/15; at that point, real teams start showing up (including the 2010 Europa Cup rival Atletico Madrid and FA Cup runners up Stoke City).

[Kevin Jewkilis]

Ok, may as well do an update.

The big news is the signing of John Arne Riise away from Roma. They also signed keeper Csaba Somogyi to compete for the starting spot (and provide insurance in case they lose Stockdale).

On the continent-- er, on various islands in the Atlantic, they beat NSI Runavik 3-0 on the aggregate. Listening to the away half on the radio, it sounded like a really strange game. The field is in a dramatically beautiful spot, nestled between the north Atlantic and a mountain in the Faroe's capital, meaning that the wind can wreak havok on opposing players. Given that the the full squad didn't make the trip and that they already had the three-goal advantage from the first leg, I'm not worried about the scoreless draw. (It's basically a spring training game, aside from the fact that the result means something.) As I listened to the game, I really regretted that circumstances were such that I couldn't make the trip; it would have been a great excuse to check out a remote corner of the world that can't imagine I'd go without the excuse. (Though having to fly there via Denmark is a pretty huge pain in the ass...)

They're leading the Crusaders 3-1 after yesterday's match in Belfast. Barring an epic collapse in next week's home leg, they'll head to former Yugoslavia to open round 3 in two weeks to face the winner of NK Domzale/RNK Split. RNK won their away leg 2-1, so it seems likely that Fulham will head to Croatia. It's impressive to see RNK Split in this tournament. In 2007-08, they were in the 4th tier of the Croatian league. They won promotions three years in a row, though, to make it to Prva, where they promptly finished third, just two points behind their inter-city rival the Hajduk. I can't imagine there are that many teams that have made the journey from the 4th tier to international play that quickly without pulling off a huge upset in a domestic cup. In an interesting twist, Stoke City drew Hajduk Split, so the city is likely to host two English teams. Fulham likely got the better end of that bargain, though I expect Stoke should be able to win as well.

[biollante]

Hopefully, Fulham can play more consistently.

[Kevin Jewkilis]

Today's leg of the Crusaders match is streaming on-line:

https://cravencottag...ws-game-on-ccn/

Fulham won the first leg 3-1.

[Kevin Jewkilis]

They finished off the Crusaders easily enough. RNK Split was pretty pesky defensively, but at no point was the outcome uncertain (even if the aggregate score was just 2-0). Next up in the Europa Cup playoff round is the Ukranian side Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk (away 8/18, home 8/25). That's pretty far to travel (especially during the Premiership season) and for the first time this year they're playing a team that has actually won a game in European play. However, Fulham ought to advance to the group stage. Even though they haven't been particularly impressive in the qualifying matches, it's hard to read too much into it. They may have been among the most important matches their three opponents will play all season, but were basically friendlies for Fulham.

A couple of moves they made since the last update: after speculation that they were going to lose both Schwartzer and Stockdale proved empty, they signed Stockdale to an extension and loaned him out to Ipswich (championship league) for the season. He had 6 saves on the way to a clean sheet in his first start.

They signed Pajtim Kasami away from Palermo on a 4-year deal and Czech U21 star Marcel Gecov.

Perhaps most importantly of all, the despite the annual rumors about losing Zamora and/or Dempsey, both are still here.

Because of the Europa League qualifiers, it hasn't really felt like the offseason, so I can't say I feel that much excitement about tomorrow's season opener against Aston Villa. Though it's a bit of a grudge match, as jilted Fulham face the manager that left them and his new team. Oh wait, that's right, Villa never actually offered him the position, so he's not managing anyone tomorrow. The match is on ESPN2 at 10:00.
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[Titans Bastard]

Dnipro is managed by Juande Ramos these days. Ukrainian clubs have been somewhat dangerous over the past few seasons. Fulham should go through, but it will definitely be more of a challenge than RNK Split.

[URI]

I can say there is very little chance of a Juande Ramos side beating an English team. At least, that was the way it went at Spurs.

[Kevin Jewkilis]

With the start of the Premier season came two decent games (a scoreless draw in which they played well against Villa and a 3-0 victory over Dnipro) followed by two games where they played like crap (0-2 against the Wolves and 0-1 against Dnipro). I'm not anxious to see them go on another early-season slide. A solid showing tomorrow in Newcastle would probably calm a lot of nerves around Hammersmith.

They got an interesting draw for the group stage of the Europa League, with three teams that were sent down from the Champions League: the Dutch side Twente, Denmark's Odense, and Wisla Krakow. They definitely have a shot of winning the group, but it's far from a lock; if they don't play well they could easily be knocked out. Should be interesting to watch, though, and geographically it's not a bad draw. (Poor Stoke will have matches in the Ukraine, Turkey, and Israel. That would be a pretty good draw for the AFC Champions League...)

For the League Cup, they drew a match at their neighborhood rival Chelsea. On the one hand, it's a tough draw (given that they could have just as easily gotten Milton Keynes Dons). But there will be a certain entertainment factor given that I doubt either team will try particularly hard to win. At the very least, it'll give the fans another chance to go up Fulham Rd to Stamford Bridge and shout at the Chelsea fans an extra time.

[Kevin Jewkilis]

Pretty busy transfer period. On top of Riise, they brought in Bryan Ruiz from Twente (good news for the Europa League, I suppose) and Orlando Sa. They came close to acquiring Andre-Pierre Gignac (they even did a physical) but Marseille balked at the last minute. But he seems to really like what he saw when he visited, so they may complete the deal in January. They also got Zamora back from a leg injury, and didn't have any significant losses. So, at least on paper, I'm happy with the transfer period. They needed some more offense, and they got it.


But on the pitch, ugh. They opened the season against Villa, Wolverhampton, Newcastle, and Blackburn, and have a whopping 2 points and 2 goals to show for it. I wasn't expecting them to have 12 points by now, but they're squandering some winnable games. With Man City on tap, it's no stretch of imagination for them to be looking up at their neighbors when they host QPR in 3 weeks. Ultimately, I'm not worried; I don't expect them to ever be in any realistic danger of relegation. But if they have serious ambitions to improve on their 8th place showing last year then they can't leave these points on the table. And while the EPL season is long, the Europa League Group Stage isn't. Good attacks don't really get you much if you can't put the ball in the net. If they continue to play this poorly, they'll find themselves eliminated before the competition really gets started. They host the best team in their group (Twente) on Thursday. If they commit defensive lapses like they did today and can't make anything happen inside the penalty box, they won't even get a point.

(I'm also pretty annoyed that they didn't get a penalty call on the first half when Zamora was tackled on the breakaway today, but they shouldn't have needed it.)

[Kevin Jewkilis]

Good comeback against Man City to force a 2-2 draw sandwiched by frustrating draws and wasted opportunities against WBA and Twente. In the Carling Cup match that nobody wanted to win, the bench had an entertaining scoreless draw against Chelsea's bench before losing on PK thanks to a blown call. (That game featured a Chelsea goal called back on offsides in the 39th minute; it took Gentleman Jim until the 79th minute to realize it didn't count, leading to a lot of confused listeners.)

But are things turning around? Andrew Johnson had two goals to lead them to a 2-0 win in Odense and had a hat trick in what is currently a 6-0 lead against QPR for what (barring a Red Sox-esque collapse will be their first Premiership victory of the season). That's two wins in a row against two teams that they should beat. The match at Stoke in two weeks will be a good test of whether the team is really playing better or whether Odense and QPR are just that bad.

[bsj]

Honestly...as a QPR follower, it has to be a combo of the two...

QPR has been MUCH better than this to date...clearly Fulham has underperformed....but this game should have been a 1 goal game one way or another. Good play by your guys.

[Kevin Jewkilis]

First, news, such as it is:

GK Mark Schwarzer has an injured spine and is out 6 weeks. They gave 21-year-old Neil Ertheridge his first look in a real game and recalled David Stockdale from Ipswich. Presumably the latter will get the bulk of the starts.

There may or may not be discord in the clubhouse between Jol and Bobby Zamora. Naturally, the lack of actual news hasn't stopped the media from inventing a story. There's rampant speculation that his days with the club are numbered and that he'll be elsewhere in England this January, but Jol denies it. We'll see.

****
Belichick would have a field day with this team.

The big theme of this season has been allowing a hugely disproportionate number of late goals. They've turned wins into draws and draws into losses. Today was a great example; up 2-0 against Odense for a spot in the knock-out stage of the Europa league, they conceded goals at 64' and in stoppage time to settle for a draw. Wisla Krakow's upset of Twente pushed them to third place in Group K and out of the tournament. Now, there could be a million different reasons for these late goals -- it could just be a random fluke, or they could be playing over their heads for the first 75, but the mind wants to make it into some sort of mental lapse or lack of fitness that's causing them to let points fall by the wayside. Late collapses seems to be the running theme for every team I follow, and it's getting tiring.

To put actual numbers to it (using 75' as the cut-off):

In League Play:
* they've allowed 7 late goals out of 18 goals total (39%)
* they've scored 4 late goals out of 16 goals total (25%)
* they lost points to Stoke, Everton, and Arsenal because of late goals
* they've picked up points against Man City and Liverpool because of late goals
* they're net -1 on the table (GD -3) because of late goals

They're scoring a disproportionate number of goals late too, though allowing far more. However, the net result isn't as big as I thought thanks to Dempsey giving Henry a piece of his mind about the Valentine hiring last week. It seems like more goals than I thought didn't make a difference outside of GD.

In non-league play:
* they've allowed 2 late goals out of 8 total (25%)
* they've scored 3 late goals out of 14 total (21%)
* they've lost 3 points in pool play to Twente and Odense due to late goals

Here they basically submarined the season. It's hard to overcome a 3 point handicap in a 4-team round robin format.

With the schedule opening up now, this is something for them to work on.

[ifmanis5]

Huge props to Clint Dempsey today vs. Newcastle: 1st American to score a hat trick in the EPL's history (after already netting a hattie in FA Cup play vs. Charlton). USA's player of he year.

[Kevin Jewkilis]

I don't have time much of anything at the moment, but I do want to post a few lines about recent happenings.

The Jeckyll-and-Hyde nature of the season is very well demonstrated by two recent games: first there was a 5-2 shellacking of Newcastle (in which Dempsey netted the first-ever Premier League hat trick by an American). Then they got destroyed by Everton 2-1 in a game that was frankly not as close as the score to get dismissed from the FA cup.

So last May I wrote this:

Though Zamora is undoubtedly the team's best offensive weapon, Dempsey emerged as a force in his absence. What can the team do to take advantage of this 1-2 punch?

The answer turns out to be nothing. Since Dempsey went to the next level, he and Zamora really never learned to play off each other. (It hasn't helped that he hasn't returned to form since coming back from that awful leg injury that ate half of last eason.) Reportedly, Bobby clashed with Jol from the start and they never got on the same page. After a three and a half year stretch, he's moving the 4 km up past Hammersmith Station to play with QPR.

They signed Russian Pavel Pogrebynak away from Stuttgart to (eventually) replace him, though moving to English ball (and England, for that matter) will be an adjustment.

I'm not really worried about relegation, though I suppose it's a theoretical risk. The magic number stands at 41 with 16 left to play, meaning they need to shave 2.5 off that each week to remain secure (so a win, a draw paired with a draw by the Rovers/Wolves, or losses by them will more than suffice). But the greater issue is to take this time of relatively low stakes to get everyone in synch with Martin Jol so they're in good position next year to make a run for some hardware or another spot in Europe.