Monday Fulham Stuff (12.10.09)

[White Noise]

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11095_5622304,00.html

Duff given go-ahead

Winger ready for midweek action

Fulham winger Damien Duff has declared himself ready for action with the Republic of Ireland.

The 30-year-old was forced to watch on from the stands on Saturday as Giovanni Trapattoni's side held world champions Italy to a 2-2 draw at Croke Park.

Having required treatment on a calf problem, the former the dark side and Newcastle man was deemed to be lacking the fitness required to face the Azzurri.

Ireland secured a place in the World Cup qualifying play-offs with the point on home soil and can afford to relax ahead of their final fixture against Montenegro in midweek.

Duff, though, is keen to be given a run out on Wednesday and has informed Trapattoni that he is raring to go.

"Damien Duff is with us and he said to me the injury is gone," said the Italian coach.

Duff could come into the side in place of Stoke midfielder Glenn Whelan, who is set to miss the Montenegro encounter through suspension.

[White Noise]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/oct/11/jimmy-bullard-hull-city-comeback

Joker Jimmy Bullard ready to give Tigers their bite backHull City's midfield maestro is fit again ready to return to the Premier League fray against Fulham


Louise Taylor The Observer,

Sunday 11 October 2009

Jimmy Bullard could return to first-team action against his former club.

Photograph: John Clifton/Action Images

Jimmy Bullard is a brilliant mimic. By all accounts he does a superb impression of Roy Hodgson, capturing the Fulham manager's distinctive voice with uncanny accuracy. Seemingly, Hodgson's sense of humour occasionally failed when he found his squad in convulsions of laughter after the club's former key central midfielder had, yet again, performed this party piece but such past vexations are unlikely to prevent him enveloping Bullard in a heartfelt embrace tomorrow week.

If, as expected, the 30-year-old steps off the Hull City team bus at Craven Cottage next Monday night Bullard will receive the warmest of welcomes from Fulham's staff and players, many of whom had feared their old friend would never play again.

Nine months and a career-saving operation in Colorado after swapping west London for Humberside he is scheduled to defy the doom-mongers and make only his second appearance for Phil Brown's side.

The first – against West Ham in January – ended after 37 minutes when Bullard felt a searing pain in his right knee. It was the same joint the celebrated American surgeon Richard Steadman had described as "a bomb site" in the aftermath of a routine challenge with Scott Parker at Newcastle in 2006 that led to the then Fulham midfielder spending 16 months on the sidelines.

Confounding medical pessimists, Bullard recovered, breaking into the England squad and becoming Hull's record £5m signing but now he required cruciate ligament repair. As he again underwent surgery at Steadman's clinic, Brown sat anxiously by the phone in Yorkshire. "It was as nerve-racking as when my daughter was being born and I was in the waiting room outside," explained Hull's manager.

Happily, when the transatlantic call eventually came, Steadman's voice proved reassuringly cheerful and last week Bullard smashed a 25-yard drive into the top corner during his long-awaited comeback for Hull reserves against Bolton. When he pronounced his rebuilt knee to be "blinding", expectations instantly soared. With Brown's first team thrashing around the Premier League basement Bullard is seen as a saviour poised to not only transform the club's fortunes but quite possibly keep their manager in a job.

Indeed at the end of a week in which it emerged that the increasingly eccentric Brown's recent boast to have prevented a potentially suicidal woman from jumping off the Humber Bridge was almost certainly apocryphal, the midfielder's comeback soothed plenty of frayed nerves within the KC Stadium.

"Jimmy's a terrific player, he'll make a huge difference to Hull," said Glenn Roeder, who coached Bullard at West Ham. "But almost as importantly he's a brilliant character to have around. He's hyperactive, full of jokes and, because there's no nastiness in him, he definitely lifts people and brings them together. The atmosphere in the Hull dressing room will be a lot lighter now he's back."


Bullard has always used humour as a tool to navigate tricky situations and Roeder was particularly impressed with the way he deployed a naturally sunny disposition to negotiate a tough professional induction at Upton Park.

He arrived there at 20 after spending four years serving an apprenticeship in his father "Big Jim's" painting and decorating business while playing for non-league Gravesend.

Eventually a West Ham scout persuaded Harry Redknapp to sign him. Redknapp, though, was never too sure about the straggly-haired boy then, as now, obsessed with fishing and Bullard never even trained with the first team.

"I worked with Jimmy virtually every day for 18 months," explained Roeder. "Part of my job under Harry was coaching a handful of squad players who weren't included in first-team sessions and Jimmy was always with me.

"If you were in a bad mood his humour could irritate but he's impossible to dislike – and often extremely funny. Jimmy was different from the others and, because of that, he really had the piss taken out of him at times but he coped very well."

Things proved more of a struggle with the ball at his feet. "Jimmy had good technical ability and incredible energy, he could run for ever, but he was physically weak, he looked like he'd blow over in the wind and we weren't sure what his best position was," added Roeder. "He wasn't then strong enough for central midfield but every so often we'd see glimpses of real class."

Redknapp remained unconvinced, Bullard was released on a free transfer and Roeder picked up the phone to persuade Barry Fry to gamble on giving "a really nice lad" a "one-year, low wages, deal" at Peterborough.

"Jimmy did brilliantly at Peterborough and I got a call from Paul Jewell at Wigan asking me about him," recalled the former West Ham and Newcastle manager. Soon Bullard was being hailed as the catalytic "midfield dynamo" behind Wigan's rise through the divisions to Premier League prominence. It is no exaggeration to say that his defection to Fulham provoked a period of mourning at a suddenly infinitely quieter Lancashire club.

"I watched Jimmy curling in those wonderful free-kicks at Wigan and wondered where they'd come from," marvelled Roeder. "It was terrific to see him finally able to make things we'd tried to teach him happen. He'd transformed himself into a top player who lifted those around him. Provided he's properly fit, Jimmy's return could turn Hull into a different team."

Hodgson should be welcoming but wary.

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the quick brown fox