Jack and Loz at the Cottage - Season Review 2018/19

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Jack and Loz at the Cottage - Season Review 2018/19

POSITION: 19th in the Premier League

POINTS: 26

GOALS SCORED: 34

GOALS CONCEDED: 81

NUMBER OF CLEAN SHEETS: 5

NUMBER OF MANAGERS: 3

NUMBER OF GOALKEEPERS: 3

PLAYER OF THE SEASON: Ryan Babel (who only played for half the season which says it all)

LOAN PLAYER OF THE SEASON: Calum Chambers

MOST MISSED PLAYERS OF THE SEASON: Ryan Fredericks and Matttttt Ttttargettttt

WORST MANAGER OF THE SEASON: Claudio Ranieri

MOST MISJUDGED MANAGER OF THE SEASON: Slavisa Jokanovic

MANAGER FOR THE FUTURE: Scott Parker

OUR FAVOURITE GAMES: Burnley, Everton and Cardiff (all at home)

OUR LEAST FAVOURITE GAMES: Oldham, Arsenal (home), Watford (away)

HIGHLIGHTS: the comeback against Brighton, the away win at Bournemouth, Babel's goal against Cardiff

LOWLIGHTS: everything else

EMOTION OF THE SEASON: despair, tinged with a tiny bit of hope at the end.

If a week is a long time in politics, which it is especially at the moment, a year is an eon in football. This time last summer we were still basking in the afterglow of that fantastic day at Wembley and looking forward to our return the Premier League with relish. Now after a shambles of a season we are back where we started, older, poorer, disheartened, more cynical, with it all to do again.

The season began with excitement and potential and ended like a failed experiment - the kind where you mistake sulphuric acid for water and add sodium to it. In true Fulhamish fashion everything which could go wrong did, and mistakes on the pitch were exacerbated by bad decisions off it. There is no point in dwelling on a season we would we all rather forget but, for the sake of posterity, we feel compelled to write a short sharp summary of it.

APPARATUS

This season's problems began at the end of the last one. The squad which went to Wembley featured 5 loan players, including crucially Mitro and Ttttargetttt. They all left the club after that match, as did Ryan Fredericks - destination West Ham. Much has been made of the £100,000,000 the Khans spent last summer but the fact of the matter is, had they not bought players we would have lined up against Crystal Palace in August with Rui Fonte leading the line and the tea lady playing left back.

The issue is not the amount of money, it is how and when it was spent. In particular why not involve Slav in the selections? why fork out a fortune for Jean Michel Seri when he plays in the same position as Club Captain Tom Cairney? Why bring in two new goal keepers? Why not go in for a penny in for twenty four million pounds and buy Tttargettt instead of Joe Bryan? Why bring all these (and more) in so late that they had no pre-season together and why, most of all, was money not spent plugging the gaping holes in our defence????

We don't want to offer advice to Aston Villa but the lesson for any club promoted via the play offs in the future will be: don't do what Fulham did. Don't start your Premier League campaign with a team which is weaker than the one you got promoted with. With the loss of Tttargettt and Fredericks we were playing in a better league with worse full backs. We like Joe Bryan but he wasn't a proven Premier League player when he arrived and he isn't one now. And whilst Cyrus doesn't deserve all the Christicism he gets (his containment of Raheem Sterling was exemplary for example) he is not as consistent as Fredericks.

The solution to the defensive problem was supposed to be Alfie Mawson, a player who was relegated with Swansea and then spent almost the entire season injured. Perhaps neither of these events are his fault but a person who injures himself so severely that he is out for weeks merely by the act of putting on his football boots is of dubious suitability to be a professional sportsman. As a result of this all our managers were forced to pick centre back pairings from the very small pool of Odoi, Ream and Le Marchant. We won't hear a word against any of them in terms of their work rate, commitment and effort but they were always going to struggle against the best strikers in the world.

Behind this Swiss cheese of a back line all 3 goal keepers were given chances to shine. Or at least, to play. All 3 had strengths and weaknesses which we won't list and none is really to blame for all the dire results. Rico came into his own at the end of the season with his 3 clean sheets in a row and leaves with our best wishes. It will be interesting to see which of Betts and Fabri is number 1 next season in an even more free scoring league.

Further forward, the midfield was a mess. Seri and Tom never really mastered playing together and whilst Chambers proved in the end to be our best season-long player he initially struggled to find his feet while last year's stars, KMac and Stefjo were left on the bench.

Our most intriguing signing (as well as, bafflingly, our most expensive) was Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa a man who, for a long time had more names than starts and more injuries than either. When he actually played, he looked lost. He didn't look like a Premier League player or even much of a footballer at all. In a campaign full of individual mistakes, Frank probably made the most. Until Scott Parker became manager. Suddenly we saw what Frank was all about. His great ability is disruption. He will appear by stealth wherever he is needed and, without apparently making a tackle or an interception, simply come away with the ball. There is still a lot of work to be done on all aspects of his game but, if he stays, and we hope he does, he will disrupt the Championship to the point of destruction.

Up front, Mitro looked reassuringly at home in the Premier League - his physicality was more potent than ever and his hunger for goals unabated. His team spirit and love of the club were often in evidence (most notably during the final minutes of what became known as the Huddersfield Debacle when another player would have justifiably taken a sick day). Those of us who know him well saw disgruntlement creep in - Mitro is happiest when scoring and he was more often frustrated than flammable.

Usually paired with Mitro during the first half of the season was either AK, who left in disgrace after series of scandals approaching criminality or, even worse, World Cup Winner turned Fulham Flop Andre Schurrle. AK, for all his faults, had strengths - he was fast, he was powerful, he was so unpredictable than no one of the pitch, including himself, knew what he was going to do next and occasionally this paid dividends. Schurrle was none of these things. He was weak, he was selfish, he was disinterested, he was unfit, he was lazy, he was wasteful. But most of all he was ssslllloooooowwwwwww. He was so slow he never won the ball and if he had it and lost it he was too feeble to win it back. Tracking back was alien to him, defending was anathema. All he could do was score goals from outside the box but he scored far too few and he missed far too many.

Only in January when Ryan Babel arrived did the strike force look anywhere near threatening enough. Babel provided an injection of class, style, force and cranberry to the attack as he sought to resurrect his international career. He succeeded in that and got more than he bargained for on the way: the affection of the Fulham fans which, reluctantly at first perhaps, he returned as he sought to put the red in the redemption of our season.

So the result of the £100,000,000 spurge was a polyglot, mismatched group of players with a gaping divide: the old Championship Plus players who would give their all for the club but who were largely sidelined and the new players who were better paid to the point of being mercenary and soon became disillusioned with the poor team performances. Of course Mitro doesn't fall into that category and nor do Chambers, Bryan or MLM all of whom worked relentlessly even as the darkness closed in but don't get us started (again) on Seri or Schurrle or Vietto and his IT consultant brother.

Of course, there is one player we haven't yet mentioned: our brightest star, our pride and joy, our beacon of hope in the darkest times, our talisman - Ryan Sessegnon, 19. Ryan is a player of rare gifts and even rarer maturity. His efforts on the pitch this season were matched by his understanding of the fans' feelings off it. But, for various reasons, we didn't see what we wanted from him - his potential wasn't fulfilled. The trail he blazed through the Championship flickered and faded in the face of superior opposition. He was no longer the first name on the team sheet, no more the hero in front of goal. But his professionalism survived his ill treatment by Ranieri and he grabbed the opportunities Scott Parker gave him with both hands. His future hangs in the balance but never mind the headlines and deadlines: whatever happens he will always be One of Our Own.

METHOD

1. Begin full of promise

When the Fulham team walked out onto the lush Cottage pitch to play Crystal Palace in August it felt like we were picking up where we had left off 4 years previously. We felt like we were back where we belonged. The team played well that day, although they barely knew each other. Seri immediately looked promising - all about control, vision and precision; Tom and Sess initially looked like they'd made the step up, we felt like we could prosper here. Even when Roy Hodgson's organised and energetic team made scoring two goals against us look easy we could see the team's potential.

Again, when we lost at Spurs and saw how bad the big team bias was and how good the big teams were, our players weren't overawed and just got on with the game. At 1-1 we had chances to win it but, for the first of many times, an opposing team demonstrated they had depth on their bench and they had access to another gear on the pitch when we had neither.

2. Start tinkering as you mean to go on

With an eerie pre-cognisance Slav had already started tinkering with the team. For Burnley this paid off - he put Betts back in goal and the team delivered on its promise, running rampant, causing chaos amongst the Clarets. Seri's goal that day will be remembered as easily his greatest moment in a Fulham shirt.

This was followed by a draw against high flyers Watford in the traditional game of two cliches. Slav produced a Plan B in a stupendous second half in which we demonstrated that attack really is the best form of defence when your defence was as woeful as ours. But this wasn't the only game where we fell back into the old habit of only being able to play well for one half and not the other. Against Everton a decent first half was followed by a poor second. We matched a sophisticated, efficient and clinical Arsenal side for 45 minutes then let them destroy us after the break.

3. Lose heavily and often

By the time we had finally caught up with Cardiff, who we had chased all the previous season, and found out they were better than us all along and then lost at home to Bournemouth in a manner so dire that fans were queuing to leave before the final whistle, Slav's chopping and changing had grown tiresome not quirky. We were already in a relegation battle and things were getting worse not better. Tom Cairney's untimely injury meant Mitro was acting as captain - he acquitted himself well but this just showed the dearth of leaders in a team which still felt thrown together every week.

We kept telling ourselves this is what the unbeaten run and Wembley had been about: the right to play the best teams in the country at Craven Cottage. But the league had changed since we were last in it: harder, faster, more ruthless, utterly unforgiving.

4. Sack the manager too soon...

Following a dire loss against fellow relegation candidates Huddersfield the writing was on the wall. If you can't beat the teams around you, you have no hope of staying up. In that match Huddersfield, while they hoofed and blundered, showed unity and fighting spirit which Fulham at this stage of the season could only dream of.

Oddly, in the next match at Anfield we saw some glimmers of hope. The loss was unjustified. Slav's team selection was finally correct and Rico and Mitro in particular showed their skills that day. It felt like the fight back had started, like there might be something to cling onto as the season slipped through our fingers. But the deed was already done and Slav knew it. All in black, he walked straight down the tunnel after the final whistle and we knew it was a goodbye.

Even without the benefit of hindsight we felt that Slav had gone too soon and we miss him still. He glowered and growled and mumbled and grumbled but he gave us a brand of football which was both exquisite to watch and lethal to experience. He gave us the unbeaten run and he gave us that day at Wembley. Yes, results were bad but Slav's teams always come good in the second half of the season and we had seen enough at Anfield to believe he deserved the chance to make that happen again. But the Khans thought otherwise and Slav is now coaching in the desert, a move which seems a waste of his abilities but of course we hope he succeeds there.

5. .....and replace him with the wrong man

In fairness to the Khans it is easy to see why Claudio Ranieri seemed like the best candidate available. He had won the Premier League, he was a safe pair of hands, he came across as a sort of Italian Roy Hodgson - grandfatherly and kind. What he was not (and a man as experienced in the ways of the world as Shad Khan should have known this) was a "risk free" appointment.

Ranieri's honeymoon period was brief but the victory against Southampton was a good one. In a tense, edgy game Mitro looked hungry, resilient and explosive and we felt as if things might just work out. After a loss to C*****a we drew at home to Leicester and the team looked convincing although shamefully unstylish compared to what we were used to: lots long balls and sitting back and letting the opposition pass the ball around.

Then the tinkering began in earnest and the style got even worse. We lost to Man United, we lost at home to West Ham, chasing shadows in the rain. Over Christmas results improved but Ranieri started playing 5 at the back plus Chambers and the few attackers (one of whom was always Seri who has the twice the talent of everyone else but put in half the effort and who was accompanied by Schurrle who just got slower and worse as time went on) couldn't score enough goals. Despite Sess coming on as a second half sub against Wolves and scoring Ranieri rarely played him and the same was true of Tom. The preference for Seri and Schurrle simply made no sense and fans began to question, fairly vocally, if Ranieri knew what he was doing.

The Huddersfield Debacle was a must win game and a lot has to be said about the character of the team for actually winning it at the death when lesser men would have crumbled but it was followed by brutal losses to Arsenal and Burnley and a game against Oldham in the cup so bad we cannot write about it.

6. Add a red headed hero

In the January transfer window we desperately needed new signings, preferably experienced Premier League defenders. What we got was Nordtveit who added little in terms of quality but was at least another defensive option, the man who will simply go down in history as "that other Serb" who added nothing at all and Ryan Babel. Fans were sceptical about this signing but they shouldn't have been. Babel kept his brilliant head down and got on with the game. He had something to prove, primarily to the Dutch national team selectors and perhaps also to himself but in setting out his case for a return to the big time, we finally had the Premier League player we needed and whilst he ultimately couldn't save the season he made sure we went down fighting.

Babel's first game was the narrow, heartbreaking loss to Spurs at home. It was Seri's best game for months and our reinvigorated Championship defence almost contained the Champions League attack.

Against Brighton we were even better: Seri created space and even time in the snowstorm, Tom came off the bench like a caged animal unleashed, Mitro burnt so bright he could almost melt the snow. We were watching Slav's team play their intricate, brilliant football with a new, desperate edge. Here was what we had been missing: Ranieri had taken a skilfully wrought razor sharp sword and tried to wield it like a blunt instrument and of course it hadn't worked. Because of the two goal cushion players and fans could revel in the closing stages of the game - moments of excitement and celebration amid the ever gathering darkness. From being relegated at half time to coming back and annihilating a decent side the players had shown what they could do and Ranieri, whilst he had stumbled on his best line up and his best tactics by accident only had to replicate them to grasp the momentum and continue the fight.

7. Sack the second manager too late

But he didn't. The Brighton game was a false dawn raising false hopes of a false comeback. Instead of the 11 players who finished the Brighton match so exuberantly Ranieri's line up for Palace away was back to 5 at the back with Tom on the wing and no Sess at all. His substitutions were so random they bordered on insanity. The team was painfully ineffective and hopelessly outplayed. The following week's loss to Man United was worse although as one one expected to get anything from the game no one was disappointed. It became apparent, as yet another loss to West Ham followed that Ranieri had not only lost the dressing room, he had also lost the plot. He had long since lost the support of the fans whose message to the Khans at Southampton was so graphic it couldn't be ignored.

There have been suggestions (from KMac in particular) that Ranieri threw the Southampton game in order to get sacked and certainly he was appointed as Roma manager as quickly as a Ryan Air flight takes to get there.

Ranieri's reputation is probably little damaged by what happened but we know now that his league win with Leicester was the result of a kind of positive perfect storm not elite management. He is still, at heart, a nice man but he didn't understand Fulham in the way that Slav, Roy or even Martin Jol did, and someone who can't see how special our club is doesn't deserve to be our manager.

8. Third time lucky

If the departure of Ranieri was a relief, the appointment of Scott Parker as caretaker manager was a cause for restrained celebration. While Slav talked in a lot of abstracts about being satisfied and managing situations and Ranieri talked a lot about pirates Scott spoke of realities and practicalities. Not only was the appointment itself the right one and not only did Scott immediately do all the right things, including recalling Stuart Grey from exile, it showed that the Khans are beginning to know what they don't know about running a football club. A survivor of both regimes, a former Fulham (and England) captain and a diligent and observant student of the game Scott knew and understood the players and knew, understood and loved the club. Of course it was too little, too late but we were finally going to see what the players could really do and we were going to end the season in style.

Scott's first match was at home to C*****a and it was almost everything we could hope for. He played all the right players in all the right places. While both his predecessors continually shuffled the pack and seemed surprised they never turned up an ace, Scott didn't leave anything to chance. Tom Cairney was back in the team, back in the centre of midfield and back to his dominant best. We played out from the back, we played crisp, accurate, effective passes. The team looked organised and competitive and we have never enjoyed a Fulham defeat so much before.

Scott's baptism of fire continued against Liverpool and Man City. Joe Bryan made Mo Salah simply disappear in the first game while Frank showed what he is made of in the second - calm, decisive and unafraid of the quality of the opposition. Babel continued his masterclass of confidence and desire, we gave as good as we got and the best team in Europe could only beat us by riding their luck. By the time we arrived at Watford however it was hard to summon much enthusiasm as loss followed loss and when the axe finally fell it was a relief that the agonies of hope were over and we could really launch the relegation party.

9. Start the promotion challenge early

Perhaps it was because the pressure was off, perhaps it was because other teams underestimated us but the three games which followed were a joy to watch. They gave us back some dignity, they sealed Scott's permanent appointment and they were the start of next season's promotion challenge. Everton didn't know what had hit them. This was our first 90 minute performance since Burnley, orchestrated by Scott and conducted by Tom Cairney. Mitro was unassailable, Babel uncontainable. It was a cohesive and brilliant team performance including a well earned clean sheet.

The away win at Bournemouth amid inflatables and Hawaiian shirts came from the same section of Scott's new playbook while the victory over Cardiff was of a different sort: ugly, hard fought and uncompromising. Not since the previous season had we dominated territory and possession so completely. Babel's brilliant goal was only a matter of time but it was Rico who won it for us in a frenetic final 10 minutes.

The losses against Wolves and particularly Newcastle at home were a suitably dispiriting end to a season to forget. 3 managers, 3 goal keepers, hundreds of different line ups, not enough goals, not enough experience (on the pitch or off it) to stay in the league.

RESULT

On the face of it, it is hard to find any positives in such an appalling season. The Premier League experiment became a recipe for disaster. The Khans wasted most of their £100,000,000 particularly the part spent on Seri who remained a cypher throughout the season, continually flattering to deceive. It is easy to imagine that the old Championship team, had it been kept together, would have done better than the group of individuals they were replaced with, particularly against mid table sides when teamwork and togetherness would have countered limited skills.

Sess's inability to fulfil his potential is a major disappointment and of course he wasn't helped by Ranieri withholding opportunities for him to do so. But the player who lit up the Championship and was always in the right place at the right time to score hardly ever appeared. He will almost certainly leave the Club, although not his place in our hearts.

Where did the early promise which we saw against Palace and Spurs and Burnley go? How is it that by the time we played Oldham, an eminently beatable side, the players were just going through the motions? The team went from Wembley winners to woeful in a few short months and from very early in the season there was no way back.

The fact is, that in many games, every element didn't work. The defence was poor, that is incontrovertible, but the attack was also weak. We didn't score enough goals. Looking back to the Championship we relied on out scoring the opposition which meant scoring 2 or 3 goals in most games. Even with the arrival of Babel that didn't happen.

There were far too many mistakes - we saw all the ones on the pitch but there were plenty off it too. The Khans showed their naivety with their view that Ranieri was risk free. They looked as his reputation not his motivations and saw what they wanted to see. In football management money and good intentions (of which they have plenty) just aren't enough. In January 2018 the season was turned around with the arrival of Mitro and Tttargetttt. January 2019 was a lost opportunity - not because of lack of ambition but because of lack of experience.

But it doesn't help to apportion blame. Most people did their best most of the time. Ultimately, everything we tried to do failed - we had the luck of a relegation team.

CONCLUSION

So here we are back where we started, back in the Championship: a league hard to excel in and even harder to get out of. But we are in better shape than we were last time we crash landed here: we've arrived with our eyes open this time and we have a manager full of ideas and potential and the core of an outstanding Championship team.

Tom Cairney has often seemed to have one eye on a move but he (or more likely his sensible girlfriend) has finally realised the grass is very rarely greener than it is at Craven Cottage and has committed his future to the Club. This is very welcome and will be influential in other players' decisions to stay, come or go. Of course the key to success is Mitro - if he stays he will be one of the top scorers in the league and promotion will be a realistic ttttargettttt (and getting him back would help too!)

There are signs that the Khans have learned from their mistakes with the appointment of Scott plus they have delivered on their promise to redevelop the Riverside stand, a project which is very exciting indeed. A careful summer spend is needed, particularly on the problem which never seems to go away - our inadequate defence.

It didn't work out in the Premier League this time but that doesn't mean it won't again. If all the ingredients are there we can achieve the dream of being a well managed, well placed, sustainable Premier League club.

But in the meantime, what do we want from the Championship? We know it will be entertaining and a lot of fun - just look at the fixture list - there is no game which isn't against a great club (with one or two local exceptions of course!) but also no game we haven't got a chance of winning. Last time we were down for four years. This time it must be less than that and we must go up automatically - Wembley was amazing but it wouldn't be the same again.

How to achieve this? It's about the right players and the right investment and it's also about the right manager. And we've got him. A London manager for London's Original Football club. The Club needs to think long term and even if things go a little awry at first they need to Stick With Scott.

A new season awaits, just around the corner. This isn't where we wanted to be but we'll make the best of it down in our evolving corner by the river. Fulham Football Club are fighting for promotion again and the fans have got their back every step of the way.

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