Football

We gave a satisfactory account of ourselves against the league leaders Arsenal yesterday – and a better one than against the bottom club Sunderland last week. The two midfielders Scott Parkeer and Steve Sidwell pressed the Arsenal midfield, but Clint Dempsey is still off the pace. Most [...]

I was chatting to an ex-footballer I know well on Hitzelberger coming out. We like to disagree, but in this case we did not. We both regarded it as a non-story. Hitzelberger waited till he left the Premiership perhaps to avoid dressing room and crowd banter, unlike Gareth Thomas,  the wicketkeeper [...]

Our comfortable victory over a poor Norwich side will have caused some selection problems ahead of Arsenal this Saturday. Some of our so-called key players like Berbatov were rested so that he, Scott Parker and Clint Dempsey were not too fatigued for the Arsenal game. The problem is that this [...]

In his programme article the chairman Shahid Khan spoke of how the appointment of Ray Wilkins was welcomed by the Fulham family. This must be a Fulham family I neither know nor understand. Our Fulham family remember a Chelsea legend replacing  a Fulham one in Micky Adams. Wilkins failed to get [...]

Pepito Rossi was in the stand last night, watching our 2-0 victory over Chievo in the Cup. The Italian Cup has the status of the Capital Cup. I am sure that overseas players in the Premier League do not understand the traditions of your FA Cup. Rossi will fly out to Colorado to be assessed by the [...]

After Gonzalo Rodriguez broke the deadlock against Livorno with a header from a corner in the 65th minute, I thought the game might close out without event. Instead, 3 minutes later, the Livorno defender Rinaudi kicked Pepito Rossi on his right knee, the object of 2 operations. Rossi went to the [...]

Sporting fixtures go up and down in prestige and popularity. None more so than the FA Cup. It was once the jewel of the sporting calendar, the last game of the season, and one of a handful of televised games. The proliferation of televised games is a significant reason for its decline. With modern [...]

In a game where result and points were all, I was nonetheless pleased that we stuck to our passing game and traditional footballing values, unlike West Ham. Passing was all the more difficult in gusty conditions and if I had a criticism – was this the early Ray Wilkins influence?- we were [...]