A Season In Hell

In his book, Sum, David Eagleman offers an array of different scenarios describing what might await us in the afterlife (should there be one).

In the first, he suggests that after death we might immediately begin to re-live the life that has just ended, but this time around all common activities would be grouped together and experienced in discrete blocks.

Hence, we would enjoy our entire life’s worth of showers in a single two-hundred-day-long drenching, and then bathe no more. Our lifetime allocation of pain would be endured in one excruciating stretch, and for three years we would do nothing but eat. We would sit at traffic lights, immobile, for six weeks, and for two days do nothing but tie shoelaces. And so on.

Apparently, a high-ranking official at the Premier League is an admirer of Mr. Eagleman’s book, and has become smitten with this notion in particular. In idle moments he is apt to daydream, and has begun to visualise the football season, which resides within his governance, being reorganised in such a way. However, upon receding from his fantastical reveries, and slipping reluctantly back to the intractable, Einstein-ordered world, he glumly acknowledges that such a transformation would require the ability to reconfigure human existence itself, something currently beyond his organisation’s remit.

However, emerging rumours imply that the official in question happened upon one Sepp Blatter in the washroom at an International Football soiree recently and, unable to stifle his vision any longer, confided in the FIFA president. Apparently Mr. Blatter, always enthused by innovation, promised to fully exploit his influence. So, should he manage to mobilise all his distinguished contacts, both divine and mortal, our future footballing experience might one day resemble the following:

All of a team’s home games would be grouped together and all elements thereof similarly grouped. Hence, if it currently takes you one hour to travel to the match, in this new reality you endure a nineteen-hour trip prior to kick-off.

Upon arriving at the ground you buy nineteen programmes. You then queue for fifty-seven minutes to pass through the turnstile where you undergo a nine-and-a-half minute frisk by the steward.

You queue for ninety-five minutes at a counter, where you buy nineteen drinks. Upon reaching your seat thirty-eight minutes later, the hot drinks are cold and the cold drinks are warm.

During the players’ eight-hour warm-up, the teams are announced nineteen times in a row.

After nineteen coin tosses, the referee blows his whistle for ninety-five seconds.

Immediately the team score anywhere between forty and sixty goals, one after another. The stewards struggle to repel a pitch invasion.

You then sit and watch some fourteen hours of open play. Despite periods that see over a hundred successive fouls, seventy-five corners (one-by-one), a ten-player scuffle, and a broken leg, there are no more goals.

You spend thirteen-and-a-half hours wondering why you bother watching this rubbish, and thirty minutes realising why you do.

At half-time, which lasts for four-and-three-quarter hours, you stand for thirty-eight minutes in the queue for the toilet. Once there, you urinate for nine-and-a-half minutes continuously. For four of these minutes you repeat to your neighbour how poor the team are playing, spend three minutes complaining about the referee, and two minutes staring blankly at the wall.

Back in your seat, for ninety-five minutes you watch children in one-on-ones with a goalkeeper whilst working your way through nineteen Chicken Balti pies.

A further fourteen hours of open play includes a forty-minute period of continuous substitutions, three sending offs, and possibly even a change of manager.

It concludes with you witnessing your team concede between forty and sixty goals consecutively, your torment only halted by the final, elongated, whistle.

Over the next ninety-five minutes the crowd slowly files out of the ground, while John Paintsil undertakes nineteen laps of the pitch.

After the nineteen-hour return journey home, you settle down to watch twenty-six hours straight of Match Of The Day, but have to wait until the last hour-and-a-half to see the Fulham highlights.

Are We Sparta F.C.?

Against Wolves last Sunday, Fulham contrived another depressingly anaemic performance.

Being organised is honourable, but at times the players displayed the desire of automatons. Roy’s robots. And, having been excused Europa League exertions, they were unable to blame Trans-Europe excess for the lack of both craft and work that they were guilty of.

It was heartening, at least, when Roy Hodgson, subverting his benign uncle image somewhat, delivered an unusually explicit autopsy regarding the shortcomings of the team via his post-match interview.

He related how the entire team, apart from John Paintsil, had been spared the trip to Bulgaria the previous Thursday, and had instead spent all week “preparing to play against Wolves”. Unusually, he even opted to single out specific errors by Hangeland and Dempsey that led to the goals, something he rarely relies upon.

From a typically restrained man, such comments suggest he was seething. If he opts to exercise his irritability when he reassembles the culprits on the training pitch, a positive change should result.

Jah Wobble, ex-PIL bass-playing explorer and disarmingly erudite geezer, once suggested that if he ever managed a Premiership team, he would “car bomb” what he saw as overpaid, over-indulged players, and force the rest into barracks on starvation wages. They would “live more like warrior poets”, he insists, “and they’d have to study Plato.”

I’d certainly be interested in the effects of such an austere regimen on the Gucci washbag brigade.

Alternatively, Roy could grant the so-called ‘second string’ team who themselves, it seems, made like warriors against Man City’s opulent eleven in Wednesday’s Carling Cup elimination, the right to enlist the first-teamers as their slaves for a week or so.

“Hey, Bobby, fetch me my copy of The Republic…once you’ve finished cleaning my boots, that is.”

CSKA Sofia 1 Fulham 1

With only 2 of the starters from Sunday’s Premiership victory over Everton lining up tonight, Hodgson’s approach to Fulham’s European “adventure” could be interpreted in one of two ways: it is a liability that, subverting form, has the potential to degrade the team’s Premier League status, and thus an early exit would not be mourned; or, it is an ideal opportunity to exercise squad and academy players, make them feel engaged, and allow their suitability for the first team to further assessed.

Slightly undermining the first, the commentator remarked, was the fact that all Fulham’s outfield players were internationals. As the game kicked off, he then proceeded to refer to “dear old Fulham”, rendering the remainder of his remarks as mere white noise.

Nevertheless, one hoped that the selected players could execute whatever strategy Hodgson had hatched for them, as, uncle Zuberbuhler aside, the bench boasted the same demographic as one from your local shopping centre - exclusively teenage - and one with not a first-team appearance seated upon it.

Along the flanks, the pairings of Painstil and Kelly, and Gera and Davies, instilled some experience. Chris Baird at centre-back would bear the responsibility of chaperoning both sidekick Chris Smalling and goalkeeper David Stockdale. Perhaps the greatest unknown was the central partnership of newcomers Riise and Greening.

Sofia began eagerly with 2 shots on goal in the first 3 minutes. Greening appeared to be adopting a Murphyesque role, dropping back to receive the ball from the defence. His distribution and insight, understandably, is yet to rival the team captain’s.

Although Sofia were working hard to limit space, Fulham slowly secured a grip on the game. Play was becoming increasingly contained within the centre of the pitch, and Sofia’s early forays forward were memories slowly dissolving.

While Riise was struggling to find a meaningful role, Baird was looking steady and assured, setting a fine example for his teenage accomplice.

As expected, fluidity and flair were once again hostages to organisation and containment. With fifteen minutes gone, Riise, Nevland, Kamara, and Davies may have enjoyed just one touch apiece.

As lack of involvement irked, Diomansy Kamara began to drop back to find the ball, before attempting to bedazzle the entire Sofia eleven. He had limited success, but his dynamism at least set an example for the team, and his admirable commitment was sustained through to the final minute of the game.

Fulham, robust, and surprisingly organised considering their unfamiliarity with each other, were slowly gaining ascendancy. The home side’s timidity was allowing them to begin to entertain grander plans.

The final minute of the half saw Fulham’s best chance when a Greening interception in midfield led to a web of tight interplay in the Sofia box, culminating in a Simon Davies shot directly at the goalkeeper.

Sofia began the second half with ambition magnified. As their pressure increased, so Fulham contrived to counter. Another intricate exchange between Kamara, Davies, and Nevland was eventually crowded out by the Sofia defence.

In the 61st minute, a pass was floated enticingly towards the edge of the Fulham box. The ball was cleverly chested on towards substitute Platini, perhaps revealing Smalling to be a little too forgiving in his marking. The striker reacted swiftly, held off the closing centre-back, and maintained his balance well to shoot wide of Stockdale and into the net.

It took Fulham three minutes to reply, and the swiftness of the response appeared to stun Sofia into a daze for the rest of the game.

With the home side committed upfield, a forward ball was hooked instinctively on by Nevland towards the advancing Kamara. With the Sofia defence stranded, their keeper elected to race him to the ball despite it contriving to drop some 25 yards out. Kamara prevailed, executing a deft touch to take the ball past the onrushing keeper. He pursued the ball to the edge of the box, and calmly slotted it into the opposite corner of the unguarded goal, doing well to evade the tackle of the fast-closing defender.

From then on, Fulham earned burgeoning possession, and cultivated increasing poise and creativity. Slowly they stifled Sofia, whose desire was dissipating.

With 15 mintues to go, the home team had a final, golden, opportunity. A pass skidded across the box from the left flank past a defence frozen in mid-appeal for a non-existent offside. A powerful rising strike from 8 yards out demanded an accomplished reaction save from Stockdale.

With a few minutes remaining, Kamara was booked for his over-exuberant closing down. Application that, coupled with his attacking initiative, merited a a share of the man of the match plaudits with the calm and commanding Chris Baird.

Ultimately, however one interprets the manager’s approach, this was a satisfying, and satisfactory, result; one that was, considering the personnel and their lack of common playing time, founded on a performance of surprising cohesion and understanding.

Fulham 2 Everton 1

Fulham’s displays to date ensured that any expectations for this game were replaced by a curious ambivalence. With the demands of the Europa League already, apparently, exerting a deadening effect upon form, attempting predictions was a slippery pursuit. Should we anticipate another anaemic, under-powered display, the team lethargic and strangely lacking in belief or commitment? Or will the side that closed out last season start to swim into focus.

As the game started, the midfields squared up to each other and, with Everton suffering a similarly soporific start to the season, a war of attrition loomed.

Fulham’s passing still lacks the the polish and pizazz it had acquired midway through last season, a quality they so commendably maintained through to the final games. That well-oiled movement, previously so crisp, swift and assured, even in confined spaces, is still undergoing recalibration, still requires a little lubrication. With Everton deploying a high pressing approach, limiting time and space, there was clearly going to be little opportunity here to rediscover that synchronisation.

Early emerging patterns drew attention to Fulham’s wide midfield players, one of whom was behaving strangely like the archetypal winger not seen in white for a while. Indeed, within minutes, Damien Duff was demonstrating one of his in-demand qualities by delivering some teasing crosses across the Everton box - a welcome sight.

Whenever Duff was thus engaged on the right, Dempsey was appearing to drift even further central than usual, taking up a position behind Zamora and Johnson. With this role notoriously difficult to mark, he was enjoying freedom to receive the ball and provide the thus far missing link between the defence and the all-too-often isolated attack. Whether a conscious measure or not, it fostered more fluent build-up play.

Indeed, with defence, as ever, prioritised, the detachment of the front two players has typified Fulham’s performances so far this season. Searching balls are played forward to strikers who, outnumbered, inevitably lose possession before the midfield, based mainly in a different postcode, have reached them. Furthermore, on Sunday, with the Everton centre-backs intent on sharing intimate space with Zamora and Johnson, neither were able to get goal-side and conjur any real threat upon goal.

Indeed, Zamora spent much of the game entwined in a vice-like embrace with Joseph Yobo. At times they between them resembled the cover of a 1940s pulp sci-fi magazine. One where some hapless brylcreemed adventurer is writhing at the mercy of a gaint octopus emerging enraged from the ocean.

Joseph Yobo introduces himself to Bobby Zamora

The referee, a ballroom fan perhaps, appeared unconcerned by their enduring partnership.

Although the strikers’ contribution to the team ethic should not be overlooked, it does blunt their striking efficacy and demand a similarly team-minded approach to score goals. Opportunities for mercurial displays of attacking will continue to be limited for both for a while. Indeed, Hodgson’s philosophy appears to have condemned Zamora and Johnson to a Fulham career comprised of ugly performances.

However, a similar act of imprisonment was being implemented at the other end of the pitch, with Hangeland and Hughes the disciplined jailers. They were doing a reliably efficient job of shackling Everton’s attack, although the lacklustre Jo, whose presence barely disturbed the turf, was not demanding the physical attention being meted out by Everton’s central pair.

Despite the risk of the teams wholly nullifying each other, and industry for the most part replacing artistry, the game was developing into fairly compelling, swashbuckling contest, full of grit and resolve. Indeed, Danny Murphy, not yet his impish, magisterial self, was becoming increasingly irritable as a result of fussy, inconsistent refereeing, his team’s lack of fluidity, and his own wayward distribution. It appeared increasingly unlikely that he would reach the 90th minute without seeing a rectangle of red against the sky.

One particularly clumsy challenge on Pienaar in the 33rd minute led to a free-kick some 35 yards out, and was floated by Baines into the Fulham box. Unfortunately, despite having scored half of his Premiership goals with his head, Cahill’s threat at set-pieces was still clearly under-appreciated by the Fulham defence, as he was allowed in front of Etuhu to perform his party piece once more. His offside position was overlooked by the linesman and off he set to spar with the corner flag.

Deflated, Fulham slowly lost composure. Compasses spinning, the players’ co-ordination faltered, and passes skidded astray. With tempers unravelling, the game began to bristle and spark.

Despite conceding, Fulham’s build-up play continued to lack urgency, the ball repeatedly played sideways or backwards. This leisurely approach allows the opposition time to regroup, and thus limit space in their half. By the time the ball has breached the half-way line, the front players have inevitably have come to rest, by necessity, in line with the oppositions’ defence, rendering runs behind them near impossible. Thus Andy Johnson is robbed of one of his primary weapons. Furthermore, the player carrying the ball forward, often Dempsey, finds himself faced with a group of static team-mates, all being shadowed closely by an opposition player. Hence, a few of his long shots appeared to result as much from a lack of alternatives as anything else.

The delivery of a few eloquent Hodgson epithets at half-time engendered a little more vigour, and the team’s tempo increased as they began the second half. Chances began to half-form, and the crowd’s increasing excitement appeared to energise the team still further. Following a foul by Neville on Paintsil in the 57th minute, a Murphy free-kick was repelled by the wall. Konchesky, loitering, connected sweetly, his powerful half-volley beheading daisies before being deflected away from the stranded Howard and into the goal.

The engaging tussle continued, both teams resilient and combative but hampered somewhat by a lack of flair. The energetic Pienaar, the tormentor in last season’s defeat at the Cottage, endeavoured to penetrate, and was being granted worrying amounts of time and space.

A goal-kick from Fulham’s impressive goalkeeping debutante David Stockdale was edged on by Zamora to Johnson. He deftly laid the ball off to the advancing Duff, before turning and making a diagonal run away from goal, dragging Yobo with him. Duff accelerated into the space created, and from the edge of the box, fired a shot that curved away just enough to elude Howard but not the net.

Received opinion suggests that Duff’s pace has subsided, but he is still clearly able to evade a defender with enough movement to earn the space to shoot, as he had already shown in the first half. It was a goal that, perhaps, only Dempsey amongst the current squad could have scored, and was encouraging evidence of another much-needed addition to the Fulham armoury.

The remaining 11 minutes of the game, extended by 5 minutes as a result of treatment required for Phil Neville’s knee injury, saw some frantic firefighting in the Fulham box, but their lead was preserved.

With the beginning of a worrying sequence of defeats terminated, the final whistle witnessed relief suffusing the celebrations.

"Nous Sommes Millwall..."

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