I love to go cottaging in West London! (Fulham F.C.)

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	Fulham F.C.
Date:	24/05/09 (131 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great footy-great venue!

Disadvantages: The cant go any higher

Full name Fulham Football Club
Nickname(s) The Cottagers, The Whites, The Lilywhites
Founded 1879 (as Fulham St Andrew's
Church Sunday school)
Ground Craven Cottage, Fulham, London
(Capacity: 25,350)
Chairman Mohamed Al-Fayed
Manager Roy Hodgson
League Premier League
2008-09 Premier League, 7th

After Phil Browns bizarre and somewhat conceited rant on the pitch to his Hull players after they were 4-0 down at home at half time to Sunderland On Boxing Day, Hull have taken just 14 points in 20 games since, after taking 30 points from their first 18 games, including victories at Arsenal, Spurs and West Ham, actually leading the Premier League in October. Phil is a vain chappy, as we saw with his sing song yesterday to celebrate staying up, and likes to get on camera on the touchline wearing a vast array of fashionable clothes to go with his goatee, making sure he looks cool on Match of the Day, the December rant purely self-promotion. So why am I going on about Hull and Phil Brown in the Fulham review? Well because Fulham were in exactly the same position a year ago as Hull were today, just twenty minutes from the drop until Kamera creamed two goals late on to save them on goal difference. Yesterday Fulham claimed their rightful place in Europe in an amazing seventh position, 53 points their final tally, a startling performance that should really earn Roy Hodgeson manager of the season. It's an incredible football story. I'm sure Phil Brown will do better next year on motivational and tactical decisions but if ever a manger was right for keeping a team up at short notice its Roy Hodgeson, Fulham's uncomplicated and lugubrious manager a class act.

This guys European CV is really something to read and the fact he can speak five languages fluently means he can not only communicate with his Scandinavian back four but can attract the better Northern European players to West London. Swanky Mediterranean players don't really work out lower down the Premiership and I think that's Hodgesons great strength...picking the right guys. And like Sven he's a man who likes to experience all facets of the game and has gathered lots from football over the years with his foreign adventures, 12 different countries experiencing the Hodgeson management touch. If Hull doesn't want him then a rather pathetic Newcastle and their hopelessly picky fans should scrape together every penny and get this guy on board to get them back in the Premiership. Oh did I laugh when they went down today!

The idyllic Craven Cottage has awarded them the second best home record in the Premiership this season and if they crack it away from home next year they will be pushing for 5th. They may well do that as they only conceded 18 goals away from the Cottage, the third best defence in the Prem. Their home ground is of course part of their endearing charm, it an anachronism in the money mad premiership, Mohammed El Fayed, the 'Phoney Pharaoh' , loving being the big fish in the small pond. The away dressing room is the size of the cupboard under the stairs and leads into a driveway with rubbish bins and garden tools sprawled around. It was an extraordinary thing to see £300 million worth of Manchester United talent shivering near the pitch as they waited for TV to let them enter the pitch on I TVs FA Cup coverage in the winter. And the Cottage really is a cottage and it has a bedroom, a kitchen and a laundry, a really quirky place and a great intimate venue to see great football.

-Hodgesons Managerial CV-

From 1976....

Bristol City
Örebro SK
Malmö FF
Neuchâtel Xamax
Switzerland national team
Internazionale
Blackburn Rovers
Internazionale
Grasshoppers
F.C. Copenhagen
Udinese
United Arab Emirates
Viking FK
Finland National Team
Fulham

-Honours-

Managerial honours

Halmstads BK
Winners

1976 Allsvenskan
1979 Allsvenskan

Malmö FF
Winners

1985-86 Svenska Cup
1986 Allsvenskan (Level 1)
1986 Swedish Champions
1987 Allsvenskan (Level 1)
1988 Allsvenskan (Level 1)
1988 Swedish Champions
1988-89 Svenska Cup
1989 Allsvenskan (Level 1)

Runner-up

1987 Allsvenskan play-off
1989 Allsvenskan play-off

Switzerland
1994 FIFA World Cup qualification
1996 UEFA European Football Championship qualification

Internazionale
Runner Up

1996-97 UEFA Cup

FC Copenhagen

2000-01 Danish Superliga
2001 Danish Super Cup

-History-

Where as West Ham is The 'Academy of football', Fulham was the finishing school in the good old days, Allan Mullery and Bobby Moore finishing their careers at the Cottage, Moore facing his old club the Hammers at the 1975 Cup Final. The following year George Best and Rodney Marsh joined up to wow them one last time and Allan Clarke and world cup winner George Cohen also played at the Cottage, as did a 17-year-old Sir Bobby Robson for his debut in 1950, who then returned the favour by managing them at the end of his laying days in 1968. The great Johnny Hayes, of course, was their most revered player.

-The Squad-

At the heart of Fulham's success has been their consistent first eleven and their impressive back four, the impregnable Aussie Mark Schwarzer the sensation of the year, top off the entire goalkeeper stats at the age of 36, another extension to his two year deal just secured for Fulham. Paintsil, Konchesky, Hangeland and Hughes have been fantastic in front of him and fantasy football league player's dreams, the big five sharing 17 clean sheets this season and being together for 34 of the 38 league games. That's what secures seventh place, just as Van der Sars 12 straight clean sheets secured the Premiership for Manchester United.

In the midfield it's been steadfast Danny Murphy playing deep and twinkle toes Dempsey that have also impressed, Zoltan Gera the touch of Baltic hair flare all top teams have to put up with these days. It could have gone pair shaped for Hodgeson with the surprise transfer of the excellent Jimmy Bullard to Hull in the January window, but the 70s reject got a bad injury, further hampering Hull City's quest to stay up when they needed the boost as it got too cold for Giovanni, perhaps an old injury Hodgeson thought would flare up one day and so sold him on.

Up front for Fulham has been their weakness, scoring just 41 goals, Andy Johnson from Everton not quite coming off, Bobby Zamora as awful as ever. But because the squad is so settled there's a lot of dead wood to go this summer, most of those strikers...

No. Position Player

1 GK Mark Schwarzer
2 DF Moritz Volz
3 DF Paul Konchesky
4 DF John Paintsil
5 DF Brede Hangeland (vice-captain)
6 MF Andranik Teymourian
7 MF Giles Barnes (on loan from Derby County)
8 FW Andrew Johnson
9 FW Bobby Zamora
10 FW Erik Nevland
11 MF Zoltán Gera
12 GK David Stockdale
13 MF Danny Murphy (captain)
14 FW Eddie Johnson
15 FW Diomansy Kamara
16 MF Olivier Dacourt (on loan from Internazionale)
17 MF Julian Gray
18 DF Aaron Hughes (vice-captain)
19 GK Pascal Zuberbühler
20 MF Dickson Etuhu
21 DF Elliot Omozusi
22 DF Fredrik Stoor
23 MF Clint Dempsey
24 MF Matthew Saunders
25 MF Simon Davies
27 DF Adrian Leijer
28 MF Robert Milsom
33 DF Toni Kallio
34 DF Chris Baird
37 DF Chris Smalling
38 GK Neil Etheridge
-- DF Joe Anderson
-- FW Hameur Bouazza
-- FW Collins John
DF Adam Watts

-Out on loan-

No. Position Player

26 MF Leon Andreasen (at Hannover 96)
30 MF Wayne Brown (at TPS)
-- FW Seol Ki-Hyeon (at Al-Hilal)

-Honours-

Second Division/First Division (now known as the Championship, the second tier of English football)

Champions 1949, 2001
Runners-up 1959
Third Division (South)/Third Division/Second Division

Champions 1932, 1999
Runners-up 1971
Third Division (a.k.a. fourth tier)

Runners-up 1997

Domestic Cups

FA Cup
Runners Up - 1975

European Cups

Anglo-Scottish Cup runners up

Runners Up - 1975

Intertoto Cup

2002

Some facts care/of Wikipedia..

Summary: Manager of the year