The Tanner Report : Fulham 0 Bristol City 2
After this home defeat Stefan Jokatovic might well be following stats guru Craig Kline out of the club. I remember seeing this same type of performance – or lack of it- at the last home game of Mickey Adams’ reign when he was replaced by Ray Wilkins and Kevin Keegan. Although Ryan Sessegnon‘s shot hit the bar and later, when Fulham were reduced to 10 men after Aboubakar Kamara was red-carded for use of his elbow on a Bristol defender, Kevin McDonald hit a post. Bristol City deserved their win as they played with more zest and organisation. Fulham were too ponderous, too laboured in their build up and a reshuffled defence, with Odoi playing in the centre of it and Ream on the left, still looked likely to concede. Stefan Johansen was not his normal lively self nor was Tom Cairney directing operations in midfield. It was if the team knew there was something amiss. Player communication is now an odd business. The traditional place for this was the team coach. In the days of Malcolm McDonald’s splendid team in the early 80s young Tony Gale sat at the back of the coach with a group of senior pros discussing tactics in detail. Now you see players coming off the coach in their beets and, with so many languages, is there any communication? One suspects though they are busy texting each other with every rumour and bit of gossip.
The Championship is an unforgiving graveyard. The belief in a results business is that a new manager should have his feet under the desk prior to the January transfer window and can galvanise a team. In Fulham‘s case we have only had one victory at home all season, one point out of the last 9, and next Friday we travel to top of the table Wolves with one striker Rui Fonte with only one goal in his account.
Aside from watching the game with two pals with whom I have logged up nearly 50 years of Fulham friendship, my most memorable moment was the half-time interview with Teddy Sessegnon, twin of Ryan who had just returned from the under 17 World Cup as a winner. This just goes to show that England will only win a World Cup with a Fulham player as right back as George Cohen was our last World Cup winner in 1966.
