Saturday Fulham Stuff (07/06/14)...

[WhiteJC]

 
Meulensteen snubbed by Manchester United

The former Old Trafford coach spent time managing Anzhi and Fulham last season, but has been told by Louis van Gaal that his services are not required back at the Red Devils

Former Manchester United coach Rene Meulensteen will not become part of Louis van Gaal's backroom staff, despite showing an interest in returning to Old Trafford.

Van Gaal was appointed as successor to David Moyes last month, and will take over after leading Netherlands in their World Cup campaign in Brazil.

Meulensteen spent 12 years at Old Trafford in a number of capacities, including as an assistant to Alex Ferguson, before a brief stint at Russian club Anzhi and an ill-fated spell at Fulham.

Having left Craven Cottage in February, Meulensteen is looking for a way back into the game, but confirmed it will not come as part of Van Gaal's team at United.

"I would have been keen to go back," he said. "I spent 12 years at what is a fantastic club and never left Man United because I fell out with anyone there.

"But they've chosen to appoint Louis van Gaal and he has decided to bring in his own people so that is not an option.

"Have I spoken to Van Gaal? Yes, I know that is the case - it has been confirmed to me.

"It is disappointing," he added. "When you spend 12 years at a club the size of Manchester United, working in every department - not least for five years with the first team which were the most successful in the history of the club - of course you are disappointed.

"There aren't many coaches who have spent so much time with one club as I have.

"You would think it would make sense to have some continuity. But the people who have made the decision think their decision makes sense as well so we'll see what the future brings."



http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/2557/news/2014/06/06/4864279/-?

[WhiteJC]

 
Transfer news: Fulham line up new deal for George Williams


George Williams: Attracting interest from Premier League clubs

Sky Sports understands Fulham are planning contract talks with George Williams to fend off interest from a number of Premier League sides.

Williams is regarded as one of the best young prospects in the country and his stock has risen after making his Wales debut in midweek against Holland.

The 18-year-old impressed off the bench in the international friendly and his performance has alerted several Premier League sides to his potential.

Williams is entering the final year of his contract at Fulham and his suitors are actively monitoring his situation at Craven Cottage.

Fulham are determined to keep Williams and they are keen to tie him down to a new long-term deal to ward off interest this summer.

Williams became the youngest-ever scorer in the FA Cup proper after scoring for MK Dons as a 16-year-old and his emergence at MK Dons saw Fulham sign him in the summer of 2012.


http://www1.skysports.com/football/news/11681/9339804?

[WhiteJC]

 
Greece World Cup 2014 Profile: Fulham Flop Konstantinos Mitroglou Under Pressure to Justify £11m Price Tag
Konstantinos Mitroglou Will Be Looking To Prove £11m Fulham Paid For Striker Was Money Well Spent


Greece will struggle to repeat their Euro 2004 heroics at the World Cup
Wikipedia

Manager: Fernando Santos

World Ranking: 12

Best World Cup finish: Group stage 1994 and 2010...


http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/greece-world-cup-2014-profile-fulham-flop-konstantinos-mitroglou-under-pressure-justify-11m-1451585?

[WhiteJC]

 
West Brom, Hull and Stoke all chasing free agent Sidwell

West Brom, Hull and Stoke have joined the race to sign Fulham's Steve Sidwell.

The midfielder will become a free agent in July and is still yet to agree a deal with the Cottagers, who were relegated from the Premier League last season.

The former Chelsea man is being chased by a host of Premier League clubs, including Crystal Palace and newly-promoted QPR and Leicester.

Despite Fulham's struggles, the 31-year-old scored eight goals for the West London side last season.

He is keen to keep his family in the London area, but West Brom, Hull and Stoke are all hoping to tempt him to join them and play on in the Premier League.

Kieran Richardson could also be on his way out of Fulham, with Spanish side Sevilla reportedly looking at the 29-year-old as a potential replacement for Liverpool-bound Alberto Moreno.


Read more at http://talksport.com/football/west-brom-hull-and-stoke-all-chasing-free-agent-sidwell-14060694821#VsTS2mEtldH7smMq.99

[WhiteJC]

 
Brentford keen to keep Trotta

Brentford are looking to keep Fulham striker Marcello Trotta on a permanent basis.

Trotta enjoyed another superb loan spell at Griffin Park, helping Mark Waburton's Bees to promotion, following final day heartache the season before.

The Italian striker scored 13 goals in 40 League One games, as Brentford secured automatic promotion to the Skybet Championship.

Trotta aged 21 has recently handed in a transfer request at Fulham, following the Lilywhites relegation to the Championship, after a dismal Premier League season.

He is likely to leave Fulham in the coming weeks or so, with a move across West London seemingly on the cards, with his contract coming to an end in the summer.

A fan favourite at Griffin Park, manager Mark Waburton, who took over from Uwe Rosler in December, has stated that he is looking to table a bid for the striker, but he admits that the ball is in Fulham's court.

"Marcello is a Fulham player," Warburton told GetWestLondon.

"They are in our division now, so I don't know what they have planned for him.

"If he doesn't figure in their plans then it would be great to talk to him. He enjoyed his time at Brentford."

Various Championship clubs are also keen on Trotta, with Brighton and Reading looking into possible loan deals for him, however Brentford currently look the favourites to land him as they look set to bolster for their campaign in the second tier.

The news comes hours after Brentford rejected bids from Bolton Wanderers and Birmingham City for powerful striker Clayton Donaldson.


http://footballleagueworld.co.uk/brentford-keen-to-keep-trotta/?

[WhiteJC]

 
Southampton join race for free agent midfielder Steve Sidwell

Southampton have joined the list of clubs showing interest in free agent Steve Sidwell.

The 31-year-old has interest from West Brom, Stoke, Hull and QPR.

Southampton, who are keen on Felix Magath as a potential new boss, have concerns over the future of Arsenal target Morgan Schneiderlin and fellow midfielder Victor Wanyama.


Options: Former Fulham midfielder Steve Sidwell is being pursued by a number of clubs


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2651080/Southampton-join-race-free-agent-midfielder-Steve-Sidwell.html#ixzz33vgMMjaO
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

[WhiteJC]

 
Brede Hangeland set to join QPR after leaving Fulham

Brede Hangeland is set to join Queens Park Rangers after deliberately engineering a difficult split from Fulham.

The Norway defender turned down the opportunity to leave the club on amicable terms after six and a half years in order to try and smooth his path to joining Fulham's west London rivals.

Hangeland, 32, did not want to play for Fulham in the Championship and agreed to the termination of his contract at Craven Cottage, which had a year left to run, in the hope of securing a £50,000-a-week deal at QPR and avoiding having to move house.


End of the road: Brede Hangeland brought his Fulham career to an end by leaving Craven Cottage

No go: Hangeland did not want to drop down to the Championship with Fulham

Sportsmail understands he was given 24 hours to think about what he would like to say in a joint statement with Fulham to announce his departure, only to then accuse the club of sacking him via email.

Hangeland said he was 'disappointed beyond words' to be told of such 'sad news' in this manner, but Fulham insisted 'personal protocol was followed' and the player 'was notified in the right way'.

Former Fulham players such as Bobby Zamora, Andrew Johnson and Aaron Hughes have moved to QPR in recent transfer windows and Steve Sidwell could also join Hangeland at Loftus Road next season. The midfielder, 31, was released last month following Fulham's relegation.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2651023/Brede-Hangeland-set-join-QPR-leaving-Fulham.html#ixzz33vgoXDbW
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

[WhiteJC]

 
World Cup 2014: Costa Rica's Byran Ruiz a lover, not a fighter as he dreams of upsetting England in group stage
Captain says his side's sights are set on reaching the second round in Brazil, and that could be at the expense of Roy Hodgson's squad


Bryan Ruiz wants to show an English audience that he is worth more than his listless performances for
Fulham Photo: GEOFF PUGH

Bryan Ruiz offers a philosophy on football that is extravagantly, unashamedly Latin. He hatched it when René Meulensteen, in charge at Fulham for two ill-starred months, told him bluntly that his efforts as a striker were ill-suited to the harsh, unglamorous realities of a relegation battle.

"He said, 'We must have fighters, and your style is different'," Ruiz reflects. "Of course you need fighters in the team – but you also need lovers." He rolls out the word "lovers" with the relish of one who, through his carefully-coiffured sweep of jet-black hair, appears to look in the mirror of a morning and find himself not wholly displeased with what he sees.

The notion that Ruiz loved too much is one way of explaining his ragged displays at Fulham, where eight goals in 68 appearances hardly signalled a lavish return on his £10.6 million move from Twente, before he was bundled back to Holland on loan at PSV Eindhoven. It is here, on a sopping-wet day at PSV's training base in the North Brabant forest, that he can at last begin plotting a challenge that suits his romantic ideals.

For as captain of Costa Rica, Ruiz has England firmly in his crosshairs once more. On June 24 at Belo Horizonte's Estadio Mineirao, his team will potentially be cast as the final roadblock to the progress of Roy Hodgson's players from the group phase, after ostensibly more daunting tests against Italy and Uruguay.

Ruiz, smiling mischievously, admits: "As soon as I saw England I said, 'Yeah, that's a very nice opportunity to do well'. We are in a tough position, but our aim is to surprise. We want to make history for our country. In 1990 the team reached the second round, and we are determined to do the same. That's our dream."

Ruiz can rest assured that his "lovers" line will cut little ice with Jorge Luis Pinto, Costa Rica's uncompromising Colombian manager, who has been anointed 'The Explosive One' for a series of touchline brawls that once led to a six-month ban.

Quite how Pinto intends to rein in Ruiz's peacock tendencies in Brazil could be one of Group D's fascinating sub-plots, although the captain insists his relationship with the volcanically-tempered coach is fine. "He is a hard man but honestly, he has changed. He sees that we are all really committed. Now we can talk, have a little discussion. Before, it was impossible."

At least his motivation cannot be in question this time, as Ruiz seeks to define himself to an English audience beyond those listless performances for Fulham. It is unfortunate that in his homeland he earned the sobriquet of La Comadreja (The Weasel) to reflect his slippery, elusive runs, as it proved a neat fit for his Premier League deportment for less honourable reasons. Too often he resembled a player content to take a supporting role, to drift lackadaisically out of games that he was struggling to influence.

The transition from his celebrity status in the sleepy Dutch town of Enschede, where his 24 goals propelled Twente to a first league title in 2010, to the harder graft of trying to ensure Fulham's top-flight survival was one that he had problems accepting.

"Twente were playing for the championship, whereas Fulham were never a team who would compete for the top places in a European league," Ruiz says. "To switch situations was difficult." It is odd that he should have been averse to a spot of honest toil, for his background suggests a young man well acquainted with the necessity of sacrifice. Growing up with his three brothers in the slum districts of Costa Rica's capital, San José, he received enough examples of a fierce work ethic from his mother.

"We were not rich, but my mum always made sacrifices for us," he recalls. "We had always had rice on our plate, but we could never afford anything bigger. My mother never had her own house, we always rented. Often the rent was too much and we had to move. She made clothes, but the pay was never so good.

"When we had shoes we had to tape them up if ever they had holes in, because we couldn't imagine buying new ones. Where I am now, I never throw them away. I always give them to young Costa Rican players, so that they know they have sacrificed something to follow their ambitions."

Ruiz's younger sister, María, passed away from illness as a baby. "Four days old," he says, quietly, the subject still too painful. The memory is one that he will cling to in Brazil as he prepares for the culmination of his young life's work.
At 28, this will be his first World Cup, after the shattering disappointment of being relegated to first reserve in 2006. Having won the domestic title and continental Champions Cup with Alajuelense, his boyhood club, in 2005, the snub by then national coach Alexandre Guimarães was a profound shock.

"My name was on the list of 25, then at the last minute they took two players away – and I was one of them. I wasn't expecting it, because I felt I had been doing well. Four years later, I missed out again. We were winning 2-0 in our final qualification game, then in the last minute they Americans scored to make it 2-2. So I wanted this one so badly, and I did it. To be captain at the World Cup is the prize for a lot of suffering."

Of all his mentors in the game, Ruiz points to his grandfather as the chief figure of inspiration, given the two of them would practise on the San José streets when Bryan was barely old enough to stand. "He created many youth sides in our neighbourhood, and he hoped from those days that he would have a grandchild in a professional side there," Ruiz says. "He tried to do it through his own sons, then eventually he achieved it through me. He gave me the football spirit."

As he steels himself to outsmart England, Ruiz reserves the kindest words for one of Hodgson's predecessors, Steve McClaren, who was instrumental in unlocking his talents at Twente. "His ideas were always so clear – he understood exactly how to manage a squad," he says of the Derby County manager, who shook off cruel derision in the England job to lead a provincial club into the Champions League.

"When he had to get mad he did, but in a way where you could see that he wanted to help. After he took the club second in his first season, everyone thought it would be difficult to follow it up. Important players like Marko Arnautovic and Eljero Elia left, but straight away he brought Miroslav Stoch into the team, putting him on the left and me on the right. He made some very good choices."

With Costa Rica, Ruiz derives his best tutoring from another Derby alumnus, Paulo Wanchope, who has been elevated to Pinto's assistant after 45 goals in 73 internationals established him as the country's most celebrated player. "When he first broke into Derby's first team, it was big news in Costa Rica," Ruiz says of Wanchope, who would go on to play for West Ham and Manchester City.

"In addition to his goals, he performed so many crucial moves. So it is wonderful having him here now. If we need something, he is on our side." In readiness for England, Ruiz will be made acutely aware by Wanchope of the dangers posed by his opposite number Wayne Rooney, who, he acknowledges, "is able to make a goal out of nothing". But it is a proposition he savours, even with Costa Rica's billing as the group's ugly ducklings. "I dreamt of this," he says.

If Ruiz is yet to demonstrate that he always has the fight, then he clearly does not – true to his memorable retort to Meulensteen – lack the love.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/england/10882463/World-Cup-2014-Costa-Ricas-Byran-Ruiz-a-lover-not-a-fighter-as-he-dreams-of-upsetting-England-in-group-stage.html

[WhiteJC]

 
Transfer rumours have Fulham targeting Lee Wallace

Lee Wallace

It is transfer season which means rumours are swirling all over the far reaches of the world of social media.  One that may gain some traction soon is speculation that Fulham are interested in the services of Rangers left back Lee Wallace.

Fulham are coming off a woeful season that saw them relegated to England's Championship after thirteen consecutive seasons in the Premier League.  Former Bayern Munich manager Felix Magath has been charged with making the stay in England's second tier brief.

The club's top two left back options are both better suited in other positions.  Fernando Amorebieta, who is better suited as a center back & left winger Kieran Richardson are the top choices at left back going into next season.  This creates an obvious need for a natural left back to join the club.

For Rangers supporters this is a case of deja vu – as Lee Wallace was at the center of transfer talk back in January.  Both Hull City & Nottingam Forest were linked to Wallace at the beginning of the year.  Rangers turned down the subsequent bid of £900,000 from Forest.

Wallace made 39 appearances in all competitions for Rangers last season & scored three goals.   He missed the last month of the season but was still named the club's Player of the Year. 

For whatever reason, the quality of Wallace's contributions to the team did trail off during the last few months of the season.  Chances are the dip in play was caused by either lingering injury issues or it was a byproduct of the collective dull play of the team once the league championship became a foregone conclusion.

He also made two appearances for Scotland's national team last season.

There's been quite a lot of one-way traffic when it comes to transfer chatter revolving around Rangers so it is expected for speculation to swirl around clubs targeting some of the talent at Ibrox.  Given that Wallace is the most talented player in the squad it is only natural for his name to be front & center during the season of transfer rumours.

Wallace is signed through the end of the 2016-17 season.



http://therangersreport.com/2014/06/07/transfer-rumours-have-fulham-targeting-lee-wallace/?

[WhiteJC]

 
Fulham should not stop Felix Magath from joining Southampton

They way Fulham are going right now, David Stockdale is going to return from his summer break and find an empty training ground.

With Brede Hangeland the latest to be shown the door, only a smattering of first team players remain at Craven Cottage.

And yet, as if in an act of damage limitation, Fulham have reportedly denied an approach from Southampton for manager Felix Magath. On current form, you'd have thought we would snap their hand off.

It was, of course, the admirable thing for Messrs Mackintosh and Khan to do, seen as the darling duo put so much faith into the German last season.

He was brought in to keep us up, replacing a charming, if not flawless, head coach in the shape of Rene Meulensteen. At the time that seemed foolish and desperate and on many levels that theory has been proved right.

So they must defend their decision and bravely fight off the advances of a Saints side who, despite their transfer troubles, are in quite a significantly better shape than this threadbare Fulham team.

But must it be like that? We all understand why Magath was signed and we all, to some extent, agree that relegation is not his fault. I am not here to blame him for that.

Losing him, though, will not kill us off. In many ways, it could reinvigorate a team – and boardroom – short of ideas.

For, unfortunately, Magath is no long-term manager, as much as he may protest. Yes, he claims to have bought into the Fulham 'family' and our ideologies, now based on a youth academy feared across the UK, but he won't be around long.

A year or two down the line he will fall out with a senior player and move on, or the squad will become so disconcerted with his tough regime that they simply refuse to work with him.

It's a nice thought, this likeable character leading us back into the Premier League, but what then? We need someone who is willing to build a whole new future for this club.

Because, while Magath says that is exactly what he wants, we all know they are merely words.

So, Southampton, feel free to pull Magath from our withering clutches. He's done us no wrong, but we're looking far and beyond.


http://metro.co.uk/2014/06/07/fulham-should-not-stop-felix-magath-from-joining-southampton-4752791/?