Brighton and Fulham triumph
Whilst Alan, Stefano and I are fanatically loyal to our teams there is much support of each others’. Alan, having trekked up from the South Coast to attend the memorial service of Jimmy Hill, did not fancy another early morning trip to West London to see Fulham at QPR. I invited him to mine to watched the game on SKY and come as my guest afterwards to the Amex. He accepted and let him describe the Fulham victory in his own words:
” This was Fulham’s best performance of the season in our most important match so far. Recent performances which had yet to produce a victory did not reflect the improvements made under new head coach Slavisa Jokatovic. Yesterday everything came good, QPR were totally outclassed and we might have won by many more goals. We played a 5-3-2 which gives our more strength at the back. His wing backs to start were Fredericks and Christensen, a midfielder. The latter was almost immediately injured and subbed for a full back Garbutt which gave us better balance. New signing Michael Madl played at the heart of the defence alongside the in-form Dan Burn and Amorebieta. Jokatovic clearly reads my column as he followed my suggestion that Tom Cairney should play in centre midfield. He was immense with his thoughtful passing feeding our two best assets the free scoring Ross McCormack and Mousa Dembele. Analyst Ian Holloway was talking complete rubbish that he would have let them go. Peter Beagrie, much better informed, commented that given our embargo this would be a disaster. McCormack, Dembele and Cairney all scored. The only blemish was conceding a late goal as a clean sheet would have been helpful. In a 5-3-2 the fullbacks have to get forward and Ryan Fredericks was especially effective at this giving us width and pace. All in all a terrific performance. Obviously it’s too late now to talk of promotion but it reminds me of season 69-70. After a poor start we rallied and built the foundation for promotion the next season.”
Brighton’s victory over Bolton was not as clear cut. Twice Bolton equalised and we had to grind out a win. We have scored 6 goals in our last two home matches, two by Hemed. We are looking pretty solid for a play off place. On Tuesday we go to league leaders Hull and the following Saturday to Cardiff. It’s been a great season and Chris Hughton has done a wonderful job.
