The F Side

Hull 2-1 Fulham, plus more put-downs with even less heart in them

2008-08-19T08:36:00.000-07:00

Hull Sodding City 2-1 Fulham
Goals: 0-1 Ki-Hyeon, 1-1 Geovanni, 1-2 Caleb Folan

We Don't Get Fooled Again
Every year it's the same, isn't it? A good first-half display, growing positivity (I had to double the Feckless Farmer's dose of ritalin after Seol scored), followed by a crude, cruel and unusual (though not for Fulham) capitulation seeing us lose by the skin of our teeth. If the rest of the season is going to mirror the last one as this opening did, I will have no option but to steal Feckless's ritalin, up sticks to Middlesbrough and enjoy some well-deserved mid-table mediocrity whilst getting some giggles out of observing ball boys getting stuck in Mido's gravitational field.

The match itself was uninspiring. Gera should have scored, Zamora was pretty much in Imaginationland, our defence is still a bit panicky and all this is completely irrelevant considering the fact that we lost to Hull Sodding City.

However, I have to say hats off to John Pintspill and Seol Ky-Hyeon. The former, I was informed, became an Upton Park legend because of his tendency to pray and his nigh total lack of skill. This probably makes a lot of sense if you're a West Ham fan.
In shiny white, however, he started as the definite man of the match. Inspiring going forward, decent in defence, and to his everlasting credit not Chris Baird.

I would have forgotten that Seol Ky-Hyeon existed, let alone played for us, were it not for that slightly un-PC chant classic:

"He'll shoot, he'll score,
he'll eat your labrador,
Seol Ki-Hyeon
Seol Ki-Hyeon"

And they say Reading fans are plastic... Anyway, our puppy-munching winger defied the curiosity of being selected over Nevlinho and Big Ed to score our first goal of the season. I have to say, good on you lad. Just keep your hands off my bulldogs. As Feckless found out last christmas; Dr. Dre, Eazy-E and Ice Cube don't take kindly to being shoved in the oven. I heard the stitches on his eyelids are being taken out next week, though sadly for him this is before we play Bolton.

Tom ... & the Heartbreakers
Caleb Folan sounds like a made-up name. I'm just sayin'.

Put-Downs III: With a Vengeance

Middlesnore-o
1. Imagine living in a town whose name is the perennial butt of the popular phrase 'At least I don't live in...'
2. Viduka, Mido, Alves... Everyone loves a fat guy!
3. Imagine the conversation in the Boro boardroom (Boro'd room?) last january...
Gareth Southgate: "...So, Jonathan. We've received a bid for you from Tottenham, but you're our club captain and we gave you our faith when no-one... Jonathan?" Steve Gibson: "He's gone. Great job, big nose."

Cartoon Network
1. Boum-Boum Shake the Room, Bramble the Shamble, Peter Rampage... St. James' Park is quite possibly the finest Clown College in England.
2. Mike Ashley's resemblance to David Cameron: "Wor, chaps"
3. The bizarre Geordie mating ritual performed by removing one's replica kit and acting like a chimpansee. Though the latter is not solely used as a mating call...

Pompous
1. "I am the eggman, You are the eggman, I am the Redknapp..."
2. David Nugent's hilarious willingness to show the world his two-inch pecker; in addition to his boss saying "Hmmm... actually, I don't really want him. Anyone else?" about five minutes after buying him.
3. If I ever turn forty, you have permission to shoot me if you catch me sporting cornrows. No such grace for David James, apparently...

Danke Schon, darling, Danke Schon
I'm quite busy dealing with my University retakes at the moment, so don't expect an Arsenal preview any time before the match begins. I'll check back with a larger update somewhere

Hull City Preview, Put Downs Part 2 & The Transfer List

2008-08-13T05:09:00.000-07:00

Brighten my Northern Sky
So, the opening day plum tie is ours then. Hull City, not too long ago staring conference football in the face, broke my heart by beating my now-local 'sympathy team' Bristol City to the Premiership. And here they are, trembling in their boots at the thought of playing the mighty Fulham at The KC & The Sunshine Band Stadium. Possibly. Actually, considering their strike force consists of Dean Windass (who needs to be mummified between games), 'trembling in their boots' does not seem a wholly unreasonable course of action for them to take before playing any Premiership team, including ourselves.

To the team selection, then. As we currently have enough strikers to launch a 'liberation mission' in Georgia (have they any oil? Or any decent centre backs?), my proposal is to go 4-3-2-1. Attacking football is a Woy Hodgson specialty, and should not be too risky against a team seemingly unable to mount any sort of counter attacking response (*desperately rams knuckles on plank of wood*). This also lets us utilise all of our non-double booked star players bar Simon Davies. Finally, it would serve as a good chance for Erik Nevland to prove himself as a decent Emile Heskey/'Let the ball bounce off him to the little guys'-player, which I suspect would suit him. So, here it goed then:

Fulham V. Hull: F-Side Starting Line-up

Schwarzer

Volz Hughes Hangeland Konchesky

Andreassen Murphy

Bullard

A. Johnson Zamora
Nevland

Substitutes:
Stockdale
Stoor
Kallio
Davies
Davis
Dempsey
Healy

I Predict a Riot
Considering our recent away form, a win could definitely be on the cards if we come out swinging. I'll go for 2 goals for us and one for the home team late on.

F-Side says: Fulham 2-1 Hull

Your Team Sucks
Continuing the mediocre ZING-ing, here's the second part of the F-Side's 'unique' 3-observation preview.

The "People's Club"
1. The above, self-appointed and thoroughly arrogant nickname. Sounds a bit like the "People's Republic" of North Korea.
2. They FUCK have Timmy COCK Howard ASS! SHITCAKES! in goal FURRY DICKBURGER!. (And the Blog reaches a new low-FF)
3. Looking quite light up front, even though their main striker needs to be lifted to work by Zeppelin.

'I call it a Liger'
1. "No, seriously, who else got promoted?"
2. I may have mentioned this already, but Dean Windass is getting on a bit.
3. Will be a serious challenger... To Derby's "Lowest amount of points"-record. HAH!

Her Majesty's Prison, Merseyside
1. "Sign on... Sign Oooooon... with a pen, in your hand..."
2. "Do the Social know you're here?"
3. Prodding sticks in Dirk Kuyt to see where his face is.

Hu-Man Rights Violators City
1."Stephen Ireland, where's your gran?"
2. Where was Bernard Manning when his club needed him... to stand on the goalline against Middlesbrough, bounce balls of his enormous gut and hurl distracting abuse at Alfonso Alves? Sure, he was dead, but that can't be an excuse, can it?
3. Thaksin Shinawatra must have been offered the role of a Bond villain somewhere in the past, especially for his talent in brutally abandoning his henchmen upon the slightest of failures. "Silence Sven! You have disappointed me for the last time!" "But-eh master, we-eh have-eh done the double over Yoo-nited for the first-eh time in..." "FEED HIM TO THE SHARKS!!!"

Manchester Red Devils
1. Alex Ferguson getting his nose all alcoholicy over 'tapping up' in the Ronaldo farce. I'm sure the good folk at Aston Villa (Yorke) and West Ham (Tevez) would know how he feels.
2. Staying with Tevez, his and Rooney's finishing makes the US Army look like they have a good 'precision strike' record.
3. Has anyone seen Ryan Giggs's cheeky cameo as Josef Goebbels in the very good German film, Downfall?

More on that as it comes in.

Arrivals and Departures
From now on, here we will list Fulham players hanging by a threat/needing a 'new challenge' at Stoke, as well as those from other clubs we can use.
Hit the road, Jack:
Chris Baird. And to think that just last year I referred to him as 'very good'. Strange times.
Collins John. Big, fast, stupid, as predictable in result as an invasion by Liechtenstein. Scratch.
Hameur Boulshitza. Has already been shipped out on loan to Charlton. I like the way Woy thinks.

THNKS FR TH MMRS (Quoting Fallout Boy now? Don't make me kick your ass.-FF)
Alexei Smertin: Has been a good servant, but is getting on a bit and has been replaced by Andreassen and the return of Steven Davis. Should be allowed to go for another club.
Moritz Volz. Actually, I don't want him to go, but Hodgson doesn't rate him for some reason. May therefore be best off looking for employment elsewhere. I would suggest Ajax, as Marco Van Basten loves a fullback who does a bit of running (and, in Khalid Bouhlarouz' case, a bit of GBH).

Loaners
Eddie Johnson. With an army of strikers at the club, he might be best off getting to grips at a team like QPR for about half a year. On the other hand, many of our lads are a bit injury prone, and EJ is nicely physical if nothing else.

Welcome to the jungle:
One (or two) of Danny Gabbidon, Calum Davenport or James Collins. All decent centre backs, at least one of them surplus to requirements at West Ham. We're very VERY thin at the centre of our defence after the inexplicable dismissal of Boca, so a good experienced lad like Gabbidon would not be redundant.

Adam Johnson or Matthew Etherington. Can't get games at Boro and WHU respectively, and we can't get a left winger without immediately sending him out on loan. Maybe we should loan one ourselves, and these seem to be the best options with regard to availability and talent.

This is the End, Beautiful Friend
Check back next week for the Hull review.

The F-side: The Restart!!!

2008-08-12T07:54:00.000-07:00

And Now... A word from the President
Ok, so I haven't really been in touch for a year. A year which turned out to start as a huge, 20m-pound deception, moved on to a period of shouting- 'NOOOO, not Jari Litmanen, HE'S ANCIENT!'- at Sky News-desparation and ended with the greatest escape ever not involving a surly looking Charles Bronson or anyone called Tom, Dick or Harry.

So, where was I during all these Gary Glitter-esque lows and Mika-like highs? In chronological order: Tennesee, in bed with food poisoning (if ever you find yourself Stateside and stumble upon a restaurant franchise called Cheddar's, run for dear life or you'll experience a different kind of 'running'), at university in Bristol, in Switzerland, in Amsterdam, back in Bristol, buying a house, making sure the incumbent occupiers of said house actually 'cheesed it' (© Bender) et cetera.

To my deepest shame, I have not once been able to see any kind of game involving Fulham. Even when we played Bristol Rovers in Bristol, the infuriating ticket lady would not allow me in. I had to make due with the sporadic game thrown by Sky Sports and the tedious musings of the BBC autobots on MOTD. Mind you, I did manage to spend some quality time proclaiming my love for Brede Hangeland in front of his house at three A.M., until the friendly Surrey constabulary kindly offered to escort me home . So anyway, I'm back, I hope both my readers will forgive (or indeed remember) me, and if not, dad you still owe me a tenner for the Chris Baird-bet so cough up or read-and-weep. What's changed? Well, I've decided to start every paragraph with a vaguely relevant song lyric. The good folk at WSC are scared witless.

It's a new dawn, it's a new day...
So here we are then. Again about 20m lighter, spent solely in order to surpass Everton as the baldest team in the Premiership. Actually, I'm being very harsh. AJ is a very good replacement for St. Brian, Zamora might just be the left-footer we've needed ever since Boa Morte went looking for a place where he'd be allowed more biscuits and putting in less effort and Mark Schwarzer will keep up morale with his 'shrimp on baaahbie' recipe. Then we have Zoltan Gera, who, although not that great, was West Brom's best player and therefore good to at least make sure he's out of the way. Freddie Stoor looks a bit tasty (though I still believe in the Volzmeister), and John Paintsnail will form an excellent double act with Billy the Badger, entertaining the fans at half-time with their break dancing-and-Israeli -flag waving number. They'll seriously piss off the BNP, if nothing else.

F*ck with the others day (and everybody's celebratin')
As my last post, the team-by-team, 3-midly amusing observation preview, proved popular with 100% of my readers (although, I'm not quite sure how to interpret my dog's licking of the screen, so it might be more like 50), I shall leave this winning team unchanged and look at all of our opponents in turn.

Olympique Islingtonnais
1. Tried to use reverse psychology to get Manny Adebayor to leave. Failed.
2. Billy-boy Gallas and his 'sit down' protest. Somebody send him to Burma.
3. Niklas Bendtner's surname is an anagram for 'Bent Nerd'. You don't find jokes of this quality on Sports Offensive...

Villa d'Aston (A hotel joke? That's the closest thing to a pun you can manage?-The Feckless Farmer)
1. Price of one Zat Knight: 3,5m
Price of one Brede Hangeland: Can't remember, but even if it was 100m, the price/quality ratio would have been about ten times that of Mrs. Zatiyah, who can only function as a defender if placed on the goal line and told not to move.
2.If Tamsin Greig (out of Black Books, which is genius) had a son with Josh Hartnett (out of Pearl Harbour, which isn't) he would look exactly like Gareth Barry.
3. In a parallel universe where the Nazi rise to domination ocurred in Ireland instead of Germany, Steve Sidwell may well have been the prototype 'ubermensch'. As it stands, however, he is a man we can proudly serenade as a reject of both Arsenal and Lokomotiv Abramograd.

Blackface Removers
1. I'd love to see Paul Ince play the race card, Spike Lee-style, if a refereeing decision goes against them: 'Brother ain't ever get a penalty cos whitey's keeping him down'
2. Morten Gamst Pedersen lives in a magical dream world where he is David Beckham.
3. Is Francesca Jeffers still there?

Wandering Bollocks
1. Utterly, completely and irremdeemably tedious. And Kevin Davies is their main goal threat.
2. I have two friends (ok, I do have a few more, but they insist by threat of legal action not to be referred to as such. They prefer to be known as my 'dentist', my 'accountant' and my 'labrador' ). One supports Watford, the other Tottenham. Both, like me emanate a unique noise whenever their team's fixture list reveals 'Bolton-home' to be their next game. This noise sounds somewhere between 'getting a nail hammered into one's hand' and 'receiving fellatio from a combine harvester'.
3. Take a big sip from your tea and read the following sentence: 'Some commentators have acknowledged that Kevin Nolan could be a future candidate for the England squad. There were reports in a local paper, The Bolton Evening News, that he could play for Holland.'
Is the screen still visble through all that beige liquid?

CSKA Red Star Romanograd
1. John Terry's missed penalty/blubbing scene: it could not have happened to a nicer person.
2. 'Avram Grant escapes from plane crash'. Hmmmm... you have to wonder whether *someone* sent some of his ex-KGB henchmen out in anger. Or perhaps *someone* chose to find a little chore for Andrii Shitshenko, whose skill at finishing would explain exactly why Mr Toad is still breathing...
3. Did you hear about the sad deaths of PiL-drummer Martin Atkins, guitar pioneer Chet Atkins and Blue Lagoon-'star' Christopher Atkins ? Apparently, a certain reedy-voiced, corpulent midfielder took the phrase 'Atkins Diet' a tad too literally...

Looks like we made it to the end
...for now, dear readers (Hi Rover!; See you next week, mom!). Be sure to check back soon to see if I have ZING-ed any other teams by then. I can already promise some witty, articulate and thoughtful put-downs, but we all know I can't keep that promise. Anyway, I have to run, for right now, I have to show a certain special someone the new blue-cross-on-red-rectangle motif adorning my ample backside...

Everything you need to know about our Prem oppo's (In three terms or less!)

2007-08-03T13:10:00.000-07:00

Time to get off my enormous arse than, as the Premierboat is about to get underway. Of course you'll get a full-on Continental Breakfast of a match preview for the Olympique Arsenal match, but in the mean time let me indulge you in what I hope will be the shortest and most unusual Team-by-team preview published this season. As we might well be the most ridiculed team in the league (after, of course, the Geordies), I have decided to look for three points on which WE can ridicule the rest of the League:

L'Arsenal Pathetique
1. Officially the second least English thing in London, after the Australian Republic of Shepherd's Bush
2. Couldn't score in a Belgian brothel with mayonnaise dripping from their zippers
3. Emannuel Adebayor was their main striker for most of last season. The other one was Julio Baptista. I've just laughed the buttons of my trousers.

Aston Village Idiots
1. Pointless
2. Never win anything
3. Juan Pablo Angel (still).

Bannockburn Re-enactors
1. Conduct themselves with all the decorum of a particularly rowdy Viking stag party accidentally triple-booked at Stringfellow's with the Minsk Vodka Appreciation Society and a lost nomad headhunter tribe from Burkina Faso
2. Why's the ventilation at Ewood Park so terrible? ...COS THERE ARE NO FANS!!! (Geddit? Ventilation? Fans? Oh, I'm quite the joker...)
3. Viv Savage. And his haircut.

Boooore-ton
ZZZZZZZZZZZ... Huh? Oh... Stadium made out of leftover scaffolding, El Hadji 'The Lama' Diouf, Big Sam standing next to little Sam. And Boring as hell. Now if you'll excuse me... ZZZZZZZ

Brum City
1. Steve Bruce talking about loyalty
2. They're about to sign two Egyptians, who-put together- are about as good at football as Cleopatra (who, of course, has been dead for a good few Millenia) .
3. Their keeper's name is Maik.

Lokomotiv Chelski Abramograd
1. Evil
2. The chocolate smears around Frankie Tankie's mouth whenever he walks onto the pitch
3. Petr Cech's Special Needs look

Derby County
1. Former Fulham tea boy Dean Leacock is one of their key players
2. Haven't got a prayer of staying up (don't say "Neither do we", I don't want to hear it)
3. Robert Earnshaw's baby face

PS: Isn't it ironic that we use the term 'Derby' for a match between two teams from the same city, whilst Derby itself only has one club in its city and no other in the vicinty? Just a thought.

Neverton
1. That Gollum lookalike who manages them
2. Andy Johnson falling over grabbing his face due to a grasshopper jumping on his foot
3. "Champion's League, you're having a laugh"

Liverpewl
1. Jaime Carragher dealing with his criticasters on live radio (GGGGHUM OVER 'ERE AN' SAY THAT!)
2. Having an unobscured view of the severely deformed, quasi-civilised lifeforms that inhabit the Kop
3. Peter Crouch being mistaken for Stephen Hawking's mutant son

Manchester Citeh
1. SVEN'S BACK!!!
2. Their main strikers for the beginning of last season: Darius Vassell, Paul Dickov, Georgios Samaras and Bernardo Corradi. We did better with Brian McBride alone.
3. Joey Barton's England cap

Man U(SA)
1. They're owned by that Jewish bloke out of 'Jaws'
2. Alan Smith resembles a hamster running aimlessly up one of those little wheels
3. Wes Brown's England caps

'Booore-o
See Bolton, though for Kevin Davies and the Big/Little Sam thing, read Stewart Downing and the direction Gareth Southgate's nose points at.

The Looney Tunes
1. The fact that Souney the Sensible and Roeder the Relegator BOTH granted Shay Given's wish to let him play with his mates from the pub hanging around his goal instead of playing actual defenders
2. The fact that they've replaced their group of under talented and volatile players with... Joey Barton. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire!
3. WE pulled a DOUBLE over them (US! Fulham!) last horrible, horrible season. We scored FOUR goals in TWO matches! I saw us win in St. James on the telly (nice bit of an Abu Ghraib torture session re-enactment by Scott Porker on poor little Jimmy's knee) and then from the Ham half a year later... On both occasions, the world suddenly felt a little bit of a warmer place for a few days after

Horsemouth
1. David James, for very much the same reasons as Viv Savage.
2. Hearing the muppets at MotD struggle through pronouncing their starting XI
3. Pedro Mendes, pushing Ronnie the Winker and good ol' Luis hard for the much-coveted award of Whingiest Portuguese Footballer

Writing
1. A fascinating collection of hairstyles.
2. ...
3. ...Drawing blanks here

Zonderland
1. Roy Keane, genius manager though he may be, looks like he's just been picked up from a bush shelter and stuck in a suit
2. Their 2005/2006 Prem effort. What I wouldn't give for the video's of that.
3. Unbreakable Football Rule No. 3245E2: If you are determined not to embarrass yourself in World's Biggest League©, do not under ANY condition resign to buying Kieran Richardson for your first team.

5 Vertical: Miss-translated dead ham from Germany, 9 letters
1. Squad's big enough to invade a small country. And Martin Jol looks like someone who just might try something like that...
2. Steed's 'beard' still isn't quite growing as well as it should. Also, he's gone from first team hero at the glorious Cottage to being back-up to a 19-year-old. at Shite Hart Lane. Allow me to express my sincere sympathy.
3. "Anyone fancy some Lasagna?"

Pet Hamsters
1. Our squad torn apart by dressing room fighting and low morale? Wait, I know! Let's bring in half the old Newcastle squad!
2. Did we give Luis a bit of a backhander to play this badly in his new shirt? I saw a fair few of their matches (my mate Fab's an Iron and I have to slag 'em off with informed arguments, obviously) and he looked disabled each time he played. Cheers, Louie.
3. How long before a 'Beauty and the Beast' headline concerning Freddie Ljungberg and Craig Bellamy pops up (possibly in reverse, as we know how Bellamy likes to practice his tee-off on Scandinavian team mates)?

Wigan
1. Chris
2. Titus
3. Dave Whelan

The Build-Up

2007-07-16T08:53:00.000-07:00

Is it me, or is this off-season slightly more exciting than most? Maybe it's just because we've just bagged six players of varying degrees of competence (and, indeed, Northern-Irishness) ranging from the fairly cack Diomansy Kamara (words of judgement I hope I will be eating come Christmas) to the rather good Steven Davis, Chris Baird and Aaron Hughes. Healy will be playing for the only man ever to be able to persuade him to come off his lazy arse, so he should do vaguely well. That leaves Konchesky, who is completely hit-and-miss: I haven't seen him do anything worthwile since the 2006 FA Cup , but before that he seemed class enough for Sexy Sven fto give him an England call-up. This, of course, putting him on-par with Ashley, Wayne and erm... Darius, but I digress.

Of course, it is positively dangerous for a Fulham fan to get optimistic, as last season's Arsenal win proved, but I'm sniffing up the fumes of some great things. Lawrie has the reputation of being a bit of an Allardycean defensive tactician, and I think it's high time to give in to the 4-5-1 epidemic currently sweeping the nation. Niemi-Rosenior/Volzy-Hughes/Knight-Baird/Boca-Konchesky/Quedrue-Smertin-Diop-Bullard-
Dempsey-John-Healy/McBride/Kamara(?)

Whaddaya reckon?

Welcome!

2007-07-09T08:33:00.000-07:00

As of now, this will be a weekly blog to contemplate, celebrate, proliferate (whatever that means) and investigate the going-ons of the mighty Fulham Football Club, with an additional bird's eye-view on English and International football in general.