FANTASY FOOTBALL TIPS

It may be a tad outlandish to think that, had Adam Johnson not dived – or ‘anticipated contact’ as he so wonderfully disguised it post-match – Fulham would be in a somewhat better place right now. A tad outlandish because it just isn’t true. Manchester City were better on Saturday evening in what were truly Siberian conditions and, most likely, would have defeated Martin Jol’s men just as convincingly without their early penalty. Yet, Whatever way you look at it, you still have to consider the advantage City gained from what is, undoubtedly, an illegal act, worthy of a yellow card and a good old fashion condemnation.

Mancini’s side were immediately granted a 1-0 lead, which not only delivers them a palpable statistical advantage, but it gives them a mental edge while, in the heads of Fulham players, the game may already be beyond them – merely ten minutes into the match. City have the momentum and the force to see the game through, and yet it has come from an act that is entirely immoral.

Even Martin Jol, though, probably in his own struggling search for ‘good karma’, admitted that his players would have acted in the same manner as Johnson did. We’d like to think he’s just taking a backwards seat, attempting to stay on the greener side of the F.A’s mindset. Unfortunately for Fulham fans, however, he’s probably right. Even though we can consider the club to be one of the most humble, honest and amiable around, the world of football has still taken its toll on traditionalism and, just like any other club, any means of gaining an unfounded benefit is considered, not vile or nefarious, but a genuine tactical method deployed whenever feasible.

And what a shame that is. What a shame that football can no longer win you football matches – it must be mixed in with utterly deplorable acts. What a shame that nothing can seemingly be done to counter it. And what a shame that, amidst all the uproar that rightly surrounds the phenomenon of diving, someone can draw a reasonable line between that idea and the ludicrous concept of anticipating contact.

Why should there be any differentiation between those two? They’re both cons, of the highest degree, and they should both carry the same punishment.

But therein lies the problem. Dives are simple to witness as they are, on the most part, brainless in their execution. You only have to look the way of Cristiano Ronaldo to prove as much. What Johnson did gives the referee little to work with, though. The winger has moved his leg out intentionally to trip over Chris Baird but the officials have no time at all to view the act with analytical eyes. They must take it as they see it – more than likely a blur of legs over which Johnson falls. In that sense, the penalty is understandable.

Yet, it shouldn’t have to be like that. We’ve heard it with plentiful regularity, but why can’t there be a system by which penalty decisions can be challenged? They give such an unfair advantage that it makes sense to cloud penalties in a safety net that allows them to be more efficient in their distribution. There will always be a break in the game – ample opportunity to review an incident. It takes barely thirty seconds to be offered a replay. And for those that thinks it detracts from football traditions – what does diving do?

Let’s face it. 2012 is here and the technology has been around for decades. All that’s needed is for Sepp Blatter to step forward and make a change.

So, you may as well discard this article.

It appears that, after the persisting rumours that linked Andy Johnson with a move to Wigan Athletic in exchange for Hugo Rodallega, the striker will be offered a new deal at Craven Cottage, and on the terms he has expressed as acceptable.

Manager Martin Jol was speaking ahead of Fulham’s visit to Manchester City on Saturday and admitted that, while there was interest in the former Crystal Palace forward, he was never going to let him go.

“I said to Andy you will stay here whatever happens and that probably wasn’t ideal for him,” Jol stated.

“But it was good for me because we can now get on with the job and hopefully he can play for us and score goals.

“It is more to do with his situation. His contract is up at the end of the season and he is a bit insecure about his future.”

Jol then went on to confirm just why there has been difficulties in the tying down Johnson, and also stated a new offer has been put on the table, despite the fact that age is getting the better of him.

“I don’t think there is any problem with him so we will find a solution. And I think he wants to stay as well.”

“We have made him an offer a couple of times and in the latest stage we even offered him what he wanted and that was two and a half years.

“So we are close. The sticking point was a year difference.”

The agent of Ajax forward Mounir El Hamdaoui has revealed that his client turned down the opportunity to move to Fulham on a 5 month loan deal in the dying moments of Tuesday’s January transfer deadline day.

El Hamdaoui, a Moroccan international, has worked with Martin Jol at his Dutch club and is thought to have a good relationship with the current Fulham boss. Signing the striker would have taken some the strain off of Bobby Zamora’s departure to Queens Park Rangers, but after a move fell down for El Hamdaoui to transfer to Fiorentina, the 27 year old striker denied the opportunity of playing at Craven Cottage.

Jol signed the striker at both Tottenham and Ajax, and, if he didn’t enjoy the best of it in North London, the Moroccan enjoyed a good spell in Holland. The striker is known to want out of the Amsterdam ArenA, but will now have to wait until the Summer for any move to go through – presumably not with Fulham.

“At 8:44pm, Jeroen Slop [Ajax's finance director] sent me a text message proposing to send the player on a five month loan deal to Fulham,” said agent, Sigi Lens. “But we were still in Florence and anyway, Mounir said no.”

The post Bobby Zamora era of Fulham promised so little and offered just as much. Clint Dempsey was almost, yet again, the saviour here, but his solitary goal was not enough to defeat West Bromwich Albion as Roy Hodgson’s men lumbered back into the game and embezzled a draw from our less-than-firm grasp.

Fulham played decently throughout, their insistence to play neat, passing football straight from the back line being an irritable but still somewhat pleasant representation of the fact. Martin Jol’s men pressed well but West Brom always had a foot in the door and the back four of Kelly, Hangeland, Senderos and Riise didn’t look as composed as they arguably should be. That proved to be our downfall too, and Hodgson will leave SW6, not for the first time, with a positive experience behind him. Jol, meanwhile, left to a chorus of boos.

Hodgson was received well by the home crowd as he made way to his seat, while Simon Davies took his place in the starting eleven for the first time in a long while. The Welshman put in a good shift and made up well for lost time but, ultimately, without an out-and-out striker on the pitch, Fulham were lacking sufficient edge to bypass a restrictive West Brom side.

Steve Sidwell set the scene early on, trying his luck from 25 yards and firing wide before Dempsey paraded his way into the Baggies’ area before being halted at the last moment.

The visitors then responded to Fulham’s early dominance, James Morrison forcing David Stockdale into a save, but it was Dempsey and the home side who then had the ball in the net. The American was set free and fired neatly past Ben Foster, yet his goal was ruled rightfully offside.

Odemwingie put himself in a good position after out-manoeuvring an attentive Stephen Kelly, but hit his shot over the bar to the relief of home fans. Fulham were arguably on top but it seemed that West Brom were carving open the better opportunities as Youssouf Mulumbu and Marc-Antoine Fortune followed up Odemwingie’s miss with efforts on goal.

The deadlock remained and the second half began with the game in the balance. Danny Murphy was given plenty of room in the middle of the park and, as such, was spraying fine passes around all evening. Jol made no substitutions in the match, so the skipper lasted the full ninety minutes and was influential with his display.

No amount creativity was ever going to prove its worth without a goal, though, and Fulham’s lack of potency was becoming a worry. Despite dominating possession, Fortune had another good opportunity for the away side and the game appeared to be slipping away from the Whites.

Along came Dempsey to save the day, though, with a goal to add to his already abundant tally of 15 this season. Bryan Ruiz was the man whom Jol opted to play as striker, but while the Costa Rican had a good game, Dempsey always looked the most like scoring. The Texas-born midfielder finished accurately across Ben Foster after being fed through wondrously by Ruiz, and all that was needed was some defensive resilience from the Cottagers to see out the tie.

Hodgson took some initiative, replacing Simon Cox with Somen Tchoyi. Almost as if to cement his omnipotence in the eyes of Fulham fans, his change was telling. Tchoyi pegged Fulham back with a well placed shot across goal that Stockdale couldn’t reach. Only eight minutes remained and there was a strong sense around Craven Cottage that that wouldn’t be enough time to pluck a goal from the air.

As much was proven, but Jol took the large brunt of the anger. He failed to make any attempt to swing the game back in our favour, Kerim Frei and the like remaining on the bench.

It’s not quite the way we wanted to get over Zamora and Hodgson proved yet again that we’ve not really moved on from him. A night for reminiscing, then.

Pogrebnyak in action

Bobby Zamora is still locked in talks with Queens Park Rangers chiefs over a proposed move to Loftus Road. The deal, which according to BBC Sport carries a meagre £4 million fee, would see Zamora reunited with former Fulham boss Mark Hughes. The main problem that Hughes and QPR must overcome is his hefty wage demands, reportedly double what he earns at Fulham.

Some sources are stating that Zamora will only be sold if and when a replacement is found, and Goal.com continue to suggest that replacement comes in the form of Dortmun striker Lucas Barrios. He’s considered a player of the highest calibre in Germany, but his injury worries have put him out of contention. A bid of £8.3 million is rumoured to have been lodged.

The transfer of Pavel Pogrebnyak to Fulham will be completed very shortly, after the player passed a medical and has gained a work permit. Only paperwork holds him back now.

And lastly, Pajtim Kasami has confirmed on Twitter that he will stay with Fulham for the foreseeable future, despite interest from Juventus.

The visit of West Bromwich Albion on Wednesday evening holds significantly more importance to Fulham fans than its potential for a midweek collection of three, much-needed points. Roy Hodgson is the reason why, as he will be gracing the away dugout, undoubtedly with the support of the whole ground behind him, rather than just the customary away following. He was one of the biggest managers in Fulham’s history, and unquestionably one of the most successful, so he’ll be welcomed warmly on his first return to Craven Cottage since leaving in the Summer of 2010.

That factor won’t detract from the necessity of victory though, as it provides the perfect opportunity for Jol to claim back-to-back Premier League wins for the first time since joining the club. Our Dutch manager has still to find a rich vein of form at the Cottage and a lack of consistency has us looking worryingly over our shoulders.

Ever since Hodgson took over at the Hawthorns in early 2011, West Brom have enjoyed relative success, with the former Fulham manager easing them of their relegation worries with plenty of room for breath. Unsurprisingly, his results have come hand in hand with some solid, defensive unity, and although some see this as negative football, his Midlands team do find themselves seven points clear of the drop and with some reputable victories in the bag so far this season.

We know all to well of Hodgson’s style, and Martin Jol will undoubtedly look to exploit it. The Baggies perhaps have the upper, pre-emptive hand, though, with the likes of Mark Schwarzer, Brede Hangeland, Danny Murphy and Bobby Zamora all too familiar to Hodgson. They still provide the core influence to our team and in all honesty, not too much has changed since the West Brom manager left for Merseyside two years ago.

Not too dissimilar to ours, The Baggies’ form has been indifferent of late, two defeats to Norwich City, one in the league, one in the cup, coming either side of a well-fought away victory over Stoke City at the Britannia Stadium. Unlike in SW6, Hodgson hasn’t had many away day blues – quite the opposite, with only eight points from the Hawthorns and 17 on their travels. To that extent, his side can be considered a decent threat when they visit the Cottage.

The defeat to Everton on Friday evening took the wind from our proverbial sails, but the extra days rest could prove integral to Wednesday’s result. Before that, wins against Newcastle United and Arsenal rounded off a decent January – the 3-1 loss at Blackburn being the only major blemish.

The last time West Brom visited South West London, then manager Roberto Di Matteo was on his last legs. They suffered at our hands, dropping to a 3-0 defeat little over a year ago, with Davies, Dempsey and Hangeland scoring. Before that, Di Matteo had humbled us at the Hawthorns with a 2-1 win.

West Brom come to the Cottage with a few injury concerns on their minds, Jerome Thomas and Gonzao Jara-Reyes the latest to be confirmed doubtful. Thomas has suffered an ankle injury while Jara-Reyes has abductor muscle worries. Paul Scharner is unlikely to feature and Zoltan Gera and Chris Brunt are long term absentees.

Potential new signings aside, Fulham have not confirmed any fresh injury worries. Moussa Dembele may return while Simon Davies is expected to be in or around the squad. Zdenek Grygera is the only certainty to miss out but Mark Schwarzer is unlikely to have recovered.

Predicted line-up: Stockdale; Riise, Hangeland, Senderos, Kelly; Dempsey, Murphy, Sidwell, Dembele; Johnson, Ruiz

It looks as though Fulham has nearly completed a move for Stuttgart stirker Pavel Pogrebnyak, whom Sky Sports reports is undergoing a medical with the Cottagers.

The 28-year-old Russian international’s contract is set to expire at the end of the season, but Fulham look likely to add his services several months before then. Funnily enough, it appears as though he was on Roy Hodgson’s radar at West Brom before Martin Jol made a move to secure his signature.

Pogrebnyak has amassed 30 caps for Russia, scoring eight times in the process. He’s found the back of the net 22 times in 87 total appearances for Stuttgart.

At 6-foot-2, Pogrebnyak is an imposing player, and similar to Bobby Zamora, finds worth beyond his admittedly uninspiring goal totals. He’s a big, strong target.

The transfer hasn’t been completed yet, but this looks to be about as close as you can come to a done deal.

Perhaps the best tidbit from his Wikipedia page, of course, involves Andrei Arshavin:

He is nicknamed Pogreb (“The Cellar”) or Velikiy Po (“Po the Great”), the latter was popularized by his former Zenit teammate Andrei Arshavin.

If Bryan Ruiz can get “Bryan” on the back of his shirt, can Pogrebnyak get “Velikiy Po?” Mark mine as one vote in favor.

Kacaniklic joins Watford

Perhaps booing Patrice Evra for having been racially abused just wasn’t enough. A small minority, maybe even one or two, had to cross the ethical borderline and take the wonderful game of football into yet another dispute which puts into question the true moral values of all those who love it. The Liverpool fan, who considered it apt to make monkey gestures – seemingly but not definitely aimed at Evra – has done the whole sport a disservice at the most imperfect time.

But it’s not just him. The ongoing case of John Terry and Anton Ferdinand lingers in air and casts gloom overhead while the likes of Carlos Tevez and Mario Balotelli, with his comical agent, continue to promote football stories to the front pages, where they should never really be.

Maybe it was bound to happen one day and the last couple of months have represented the eye of the metaphorical storm. Racism took the foreground and cast other, irksome plot lines into the shadow, thus allowing the likes of Kenny Dalglish and Alex Ferguson, with their fractious referee-bashing to go wholly unnoticed. It’s such a shame that managers of the highest order, not just of contemporary times but of yesteryear too, can bring the game into such a state of disrepute, when all is really needed is an admittance that, just maybe, they’d got things wrong on the day and that, most likely, their hardships would be balanced out come seasons end.

It won’t happen though, because they need to protect themselves, first and foremost. And that is just the problem with football right now. It’s not the bafflingly vast wages or the influx of foreign stars onto our shores – they’re just the oft-recited beliefs of those who fail to see that, ultimately, everyone in football has become a self-obsessed Neanderthal, incapable, on the most part, of emotion, and either lacking any genuine loyalty, or being blindly committed to the extent of defending palpably incriminating actions. While Dalglish will happily sit back and support his key striker with the application of, quite simply, crass apparel in the form of Luis Suarez t-shirts, Tevez is sunning himself on the other side of the World proving that, once and for all, it is possible to get a whole country to hate you.

A new low was reached yesterday, however, with the cancellation of QPR’s pre-match hand shake with Chelsea. It proves hard for me to agree with Mark Hughes, but he’s right in that it was a necessary precaution to take by the FA – but how saddening is that? We must forego one of the only times that footballer’s show genuine respect to one another, in the most part because the governing bodies have been so slow in proving Terry innocent or guilty. This could all be over with now, but the awkwardness still hangs low. Ferdinand is right not to shake his hand, and his team mates are arguably correct in standing by him, but were this dealt with more hastily, we’d all know for sure where we stand.

All the while, our Argentinian friend, on an extended holiday in his homeland, mulls over plausible retirement. On what reasonable grounds? Does he feel sickeningly hard done by, and unjustifiably treated? Has he become bored of not being paid, for not playing football? Or would it just be a publicity stunt? Knowing Tevez, a mixture of the three would probably cover the truth – it’s just unfortunate for him that we’d probably rather he did quit football and perhaps enter something more suitable for his egotistical exploits – perhaps he could be a lawyer, or a bent cop. All that talent would go to waste but at least we’d remove a chink from the armour, because football is taking a moral battering right now, and it’s getting it from all angles.

What is needed is a long, hard look in the mirror, and an even longer pause for reflection. Something should be done and something can be done about this decline. Racism will eventually depart for good and its link to the football stands will relinquish. Footballers themselves should be made aware of the sanctions that racial slurs bring, taking into account that pulling Suarez and Terry out of football while their cases are closed would make the utmost of sense. Managers will never change, but the respect campaign needs tightening and the sanctions need to be universal.

Meanwhile, Mario Balotelli should probably get a straitjacket, and so should his agent. At least this way, the true face of football can be upheld and we can be proud to fill the back pages yet again.

It’s going to take some time to get over our third cup exit of the season. It’s not simply because it leaves us with no reasonable hope of silverware this year, but because the defeat on Friday night , and for that matter the calamitous evening at home to Odense, was so lethargic and awkward in its making. The draw that left us cut loose from the glories of Europe was, ultimately, unexpected and perplexing, while our trip to Goodison Park left 400 away fans wondering why they bothered to book the day off of work.

Why skip sitting in your office emailing funny pictures to your friends when all you have to replace it is yet another dire display away from home?

As much as we’d like to think it is, and as much as I’d like to make him a scapegoat, Martin Jol just isn’t the problem, though. Our away form has been nigglingly poor ever since we entered the woozy heights of Premier League football, but under Roy Hodgson the problems seemed somewhat accentuated. He decided the best way to counter that fact was to simply defend and throw as many bodies as plausible behind the ball, which, while effectual on occasion, was nigh-on paralysing with its blandness. He’d become more adventurous as the season wore thin but, ultimately, Fulham had become a pushover on their travels.

Mark Hughes didn’t go a long way to changing that but, under Jol, there is a feeling that something, albeit impotently as of yet, is being done to address the issue. Our only away victory was at Wigan Athletic and it wasn’t in any way deserved or particularly joyous to watch, but it was, nonetheless, a rare occurrence in that it came so early in our campaign. Since then we’ve at least looked adventurous on our travels – it’s just a shame that the increased importance of our attacking forces has left defensive frailties open to exploit. Our draw at Arsenal, for example, wasn’t achieved through backs-against-the-wall defending, but a mixture of solid attacking football and sound organisation. Under Hodgson, those attacking forays were but distant dreams.

We had eleven shots on goal at the Emirates and we played them at their own passing game – even achieving a better pass success rate. Clearly, while the results aren’t quite coming Jol’s way, he’s set us up nicely.

While we can play that free-flowing football at times, the Dutchman also knows when to change things around and doesn’t seem afraid to do it – Friday night’s substitutions aside. The Newcastle game is the most perfect example, a game in which we were being outplayed and out-thought. He changed things at half time and we were a different team, and the argument that we should have simply started out in that tactical set up is just a ludicrous one.

Meanwhile, as all this goes on above the surface, we fail to notice his commitment to youth. Marcello Trotta made his first team debut in the defeat to Everton and the likes of Matthew Briggs, Pajtim Kasami, Marcel Gecov and Kerim Frei have shone when at their best. Could we see any of the above getting genuine first team opportunities under Hodgson or Hughes?

What it shows is also an engagement with the club. With his policy on younger players, it is palpable that this man is in it for the long haul as opposed to just coming along for the ride. He’s more loyal than Hughes and we should be thankful because, no matter how poorly some of our results appear, he is a manager with credentials of the highest class.

He’d be difficult to replace, were he to leave, and although it’s a cliché, Jol just needs a little time. Time to make things his own and truly place a stamp on this club. After all, 12th really isn’t that bad.