Saturday Fulham Stuff - 30/05/20...

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Big Decision For Harrison Reed If Fulham Excersise Option To Sign

Fulham have an important decision to make with regard to their Saints player currently on loan at Craven Cottage, Harrison Reed.

At one stage it was hoped that Harrison Reed would have a bright future at St Mary's after making his Premier League debut in the 2013/14 season under Mauricio Pochettino with 4 late appearances off the bench.

In Ronald Koeman's first season he made another 9 appearances and aged just 20 might have thought that he could force his way into the team on a more regular basis, little did he know though that be the summer of 2015 he had made 13 of his current total of 17 games in a Saints shirt in the Premier League.

In the following two seasons he would play the final 4 games and since his final 5 minute sub appearance in April 2017, he has spent the last three years out on loan and not featured in a competitive game for Saints.

Indeed in the last 5 years he has been ignored by every manager including Ronald Koeman in his second season, who gave him just 10 minutes off the bench and then Claude Puel who gave him just one start and another 2 games off the bench in the League totalling 62 minutes.

But his stock remains high with some Saints fans who feel he has something to offer, but 72 minutes football for the club in 5 seasons does not back that up and this is not a crossroads for Reed in his career.

At 25 and about to enter the final year of his contract at St Mary's he has a decision to make, one question would be why has he been out on loan for three seasons and not gone earlier, one possible answer could be money and that is where his decision now lies.

He was one of those young players who back in 2016 where signed to contracts that although perhaps not massive in relation to some players at the club were still substantially higher than they could earn elsewhere, especially in the Championship where Reed has spent the last three seasons on loan.

I don't blame the player for this, the difference in still being under contract with Saints or being on a permanent move to a Championship club would run into several million over a 3-4 year period, the question is does he cut his losses for next season and sign a long term deal elsewhere.

Fulham have the option to sign the player permanently, but as we know at Saints an option is only valid if the player is willing to sign permanently and of course if the club itself wants to sign their on loan player.

Reed spell at Fulham has not been an unqualified success, although that is as much to do with injury as anything else and just as he returned to full fitness after a calf injury that kept him out for two spells the season was suspended.

Reed will want the season to resume and he will be keen to stay at Craven Cottage until the end of it so he can show his worth.

Ironically if he plays and stars in their performances he might just end his hopes of a deal at the West London club, if they win promotion then they will perhaps prefer to look elsewhere and have the money to bring in higher quality players as they did a couple of years ago for their return to the Premier League, whereas if they are not promoted then Reed is likely to be a consideration for them.

The problem for Reed has always been his size, 20 years ago this would not have been a problem, but now in an age of athleticism, there are few players below 6ft, Reed perhaps looks smaller than he is on the field because of it.

So a big summer for Harrison Reed and I wish him well wherever he may be, in writing this article I was surprised how few games and actual minutes on the pitch he had played in the Premier League, 6 starts and 9 off the bench for a total of only 538 minutes, that is not even 6 full games in total.

In contrast in his 17 League games for Fulham this season he has almost exactly doubled that number of minutes.

I think Reed has a good career ahead of him in the Championship, if not at Fulham then elsewhere, perhaps we will not have seen the last of him in the Premier League.

This perhaps shows that there is no way back at St Mary's for Reed, his future does lie elsewhere and I hope it is a happy one and he enjoys a long career, his development has been held up by money, that is the name of the game now, with an impending refund due to be paid of TV money to the Premier League, Saints will be keen to perhaps raise a couple of million of that by the sale of Harrison Reed and a few other players.



https://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/southampton/news/52426/

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Blackburn captain Elliott Bennett and two Fulham players test positive

Blackburn captain Elliott Bennett and two unnamed Fulham players have tested positive for coronavirus in the latest round of testing in the Championship.

The EFL confirmed 1,030 samples from players and staff were gathered at second-tier clubs between Monday and Wednesday of this week, with three positive results coming from two clubs.

Blackburn confirmed Bennett had been tested on Monday and was found to have Covid-19, but was asymptomatic.

He will now isolate for seven days and will return to training on June 5 if he does not go on to develop symptoms, the club said.

Bennett said: "I feel fit and healthy. Hopefully this sends out a positive message to the community that perhaps many people have or have had the virus without showing any effects.

"I obviously would never have known if we hadn't returned to training and taken the tests, because I don't feel unwell and have got no symptoms whatsoever.

"There seems to have been a lot of hysteria about footballers returning to training, but it's not a big deal at all. It's the people who are seriously ill in hospital that we need to worry about, not footballers who are fit and healthy, and who aren't showing any signs of being unwell."

Fulham confirmed two of their players had also tested positive, but did not name them due to medical confidentiality.

The results, which show that well over 99.5 per cent of those tested were negative, is a further boost to the Championship's restart plans, with the competition hoping to resume at some stage next month.

Votes on curtailing the League One and Two seasons are expected next week.

At Premier League level, four individuals from three clubs were found to be Covid-19 positive in the testing round conducted on Monday and Tuesday, which covered 1,008 tests.

Top-flight clubs voted unanimously in favour of a return to contact training on Wednesday and are meeting again today to discuss wider issues such as the restart date, the rebate to broadcasters, neutral venues and models for curtailment.



https://www.fourfourtwo.com/news/blackburn-captain-elliott-bennett-and-two-fulham-players-test-positive-1590663203000

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The Bundesliga news that could affect West Brom's title battle with Leeds United

Slaven Bilic and his squad may want to pay attention to the effect of empty stadiums on results outside England

When the last round of Championship matches took place, draws for both West Bromwich Albion and Fulham ensured Slaven Bilic's side kept their six-point buffer in the race for automatic promotion.

However, if the competition is to return behind closed doors, Bilic and his squad may want to pay attention to the effect of empty stadiums on results outside England.

There's already been a very striking difference in the Bundesliga, a competition with huge and vocal crowds - namely that, when those crowds disappear, home advantage diminishes.

Since the return of the competition, home teams have won just five of 27 games, with 12 away wins and 10 draws. Away teams had won 35% of games before lockdown, but now that figure is up to 44%.

Thankfully for West Bromwich Albion, a loss of home advantage seems unlikely to be as dramatic as it might be for their promotion rivals. Albion have already picked up more points on the road than any other club, while their 39 points from 19 league games dwarfs their 31 from 18 at the Hawthorns.

In contrast, league leaders Leeds (37 to 34), third-placed Fulham (38 to 26) and Brentford in fourth (35 to 25) all have more points at home than on the road.

While Bilic's team have more home games remaining than they do away fixtures, theoretically having more opportunities to lose a theoretical advantage (they've still only lost three times at home, after all), the identity of their opponents is worth keeping in mind.

Three of the four away games are against teams with a difference of 10 or more points between their home and away records - Brentford, Blackburn and Huddersfield - while struggling Hull and Birmingham are teams they ought to be confident of beating at home with or without fans present.

The big one, of course, is the Fulham game: Albion were due to host their rivals on the weekend of April 18, and the Cottagers can blame an away record of six wins, eight draws and four defeats for leaving them in third rather than in one of the automatic promotion spots.

It will be interesting to see if statistics from the Bundesliga are repeated in England, and, if so, how this impacts the race for promotion to the Premier League.



https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/bundesliga-news-could-affect-west-18330167

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EFL: Leagues One and Two play-offs to be before Championship play-offs

Football in England has been suspended since 13 March

The League One and League Two play-offs are likely to be held before the Championship play-offs in an effort to help clubs deal with difficult contractual situations.

The Football League confirmed on Friday that a meeting will be held on 8 June, when clubs will vote on whether to allow seasons to be curtailed if the majority in each league requests it.

League Two clubs have already decided that is the route they wish to go down but, so far, no consensus has been reached in League One.

The idea of halting that division has met with vehement opposition from some clubs, with both Tranmere and Peterborough threatening legal action.

Whatever the outcome of the votes, it is intended that the final promotion slot in both divisions will be decided by the normal play-off format, starting with a two-legged semi-final.

In normal circumstances, play-off matches across the three EFL divisions are scheduled in close proximity.

That will not be the case this season.

The Championship is likely to return about 20 June, with clubs set to start contact training on Monday if they meet the criteria in their protocols and complete the appropriate risk assessments.

The Championships play-offs would then take place in late July with the final - potentially - at the beginning of August, meaning clubs will need to agree the use of short-term contract extensions for those players whose deals expire on 30 June, as the Premier League has done.

However, even though all the clubs involved are keen for the League One and Two play-offs to be completed, they also have a significant number of players whose contracts expire on 30 June.

The EFL is mindful of the decisions that need to be made about retaining or releasing players in a period in which fans are not allowed in stadiums, and the major adverse impact that has on club budgets.

As a result it plans to hold the League One and Two play-offs as soon as practically possible to avoid a negative impact on the four clubs taking part in the play-offs, particularly the three that do not gain promotion.

It is still anticipated all three finals will be played at Wembley.



https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/52854470

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'It was an ugly time... teams did not want to play friendlies against us': Former Watford and Fulham boss Slavisa Jokanovic reveals the difficulty of his talented Yugoslavia team being banned from three major tournaments

    Plenty of tournament debuts were ruined by the cancellation of Euro 2020
    Slavisa Jokanovic was a key part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia team
    Sanctions imposed on the newly formed state had been extended to sport
    It meant Jokanovic's side would be banned from three major tournaments

As top players all around Europe forlornly turn their calendars from May to June on Monday and remember this would have been almost the start of Euro 2020, Slavisa Jokanovic can assure them: it could be worse.

Plenty of tournament debuts and final international swansongs were ruined by the inevitable cancellation of this June's European Championship, but as Jokanovic says: 'Fortunately this generation of players are going to play next year. For us in 1992, they took that Euros away and we were never able to get it back.'

The former Watford and Fulham manager was then a key part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia team tipped by some to win Euro'92.


Slavisa Jokanovic can assure top players it could be worse having to wait a year for Euro 2020

They were due to play England in the group stage on June 11 but instead found themselves packing their bags on May 31, sent home by UEFA.

The Siege of Sarajevo had begun the month before and a United Nations resolution, imposing sanctions on the newly formed state had been extended to sport. It meant Jokanovic's side would be banned from the tournament in Sweden, the 1994 World Cup in the USA, and Euro 96 in England.

'They are sad memories,' he says. 'I was very young. For a lot of my team-mates it was their first big tournament. I had to wait until I was 30 before I could play the World Cup in France.'

'There were lots of rumours about what might happen so we were the first team to arrive in Sweden.' Maybe if they were in-situ early it would be harder for UEFA to kick them out. It didn't work.

'The disappointment was massive. We really wanted to show what we could do on such a big stage and for political reasons we were going back and feeling awful about it.


The former Watford and Fulham manager was then a key part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia team tipped by some to win Euro'92

'It was an ugly time. Teams did not want to play friendlies against us.

'We had to wait some two or three days more so that they could organize a plane to take us back to Belgrade.

'Then there was a problem with the plane and they were not going to let us take off. We had to wait 10 hours at the airport until at last they allowed us to leave.'

He knows that war back home meant this lost opportunity for a group of young sportsmen paled into insignificance.

'Of course there were other people suffering much more than we were,' he says. 'We suffered in a sporting sense but other people suffered for everything else that happened in what was terrible time.'

What a group of young sportsman it was though. In 1987 Yugoslavia had won the U-20 World Cup in Chile. In 1990 their Under-21s were runners-up in the Euros.

But by 1992 the old country and the team had broken up. Even without top Croatian players [Croatia was recognized by Uefa from 1993], Jokanovic feels FR Yugoslavia could have won the Euros.

'In the qualifiers we started with the complete old Yugoslavia but when we got to the finals we were already missing important players. We lost a certain Darko Pancev to Croatia if you remember him. He had scored 10 goals in the qualifiers.

'We could have achieved something with the players we still had, but a month earlier the team had been even stronger.'

There cannot have been much desire to watch the games once the tournament started without them, especially as the Danish team that replaced them emerged as winners?


Jokanovic (back row, three from the right) was part of a talented Yugoslav team

'We weren't really in the mood for watching football,' he says. 'I remember the semi-finals. From our group Sweden progressed and so did Denmark, and England and France were knocked out.

'In qualifying we had a better team than Denmark but they arrived nice and relaxed.

'To be honest I have deleted this tournament from my memory. We couldn't take part and that's that. We carried on playing and many of us had the chance to compete in another Euros in 2000, and take part in the 1998 World Cup.'

He played in that Euros eight years later. FR Yugoslavia still had a decent side but they were knocked out by The Netherlands in the quarter-finals.

He watched the game from the sidelines having been sent off in the 3-4 defeat to Spain in the last group match.


Jokanovic was banned from the tournament in Sweden, the 1994 World Cup in the USA, and Euro 96 in England

'When we faced Spain we tried to impose ourselves physically,' he says. 'But I took it too far and got sent off for two fouls.

The second seemed innocuous maybe? 'Well you call it the second,' he says. 'It was more like the eighth and I paid for it.'

Speaking from lockdown in Qatar where he is coaching Al-Gharafa, Jokanovic still displays that slightly world-weary charisma and dry humour that made him popular at both Watford and Fulham.

It's clear he would much rather dwell on the enduring friendships he made with Croatian players than the conflict that meant they were no longer international team-mates.

'I was with Mario Stanic at Chelsea and Robert Prosinecki at Oviedo,' he says. 'Some people want to dwell on the politics more than others, those who I have coincided with in my career have tended to want to concentrate on the football.'

Jokanovic remains in awe of Prosinecki's talent and when asked about the legendary stories of a kitman having cigarettes lit for him at half-time when he played in England he rejects the caricature of him as a lazy genius.

'There are a lot of exaggerations,' he says. 'Robert came from a culture in the old Yugoslavia where a lot of players smoked. Someone smoking after a game would have been considered normal but if they had a beer then questions would have been asked.

'Robert worked hard and he had so much quality. He was someone who never hid. He always wanted to be involved. He was in love with the ball.'

Having been successful in Spain, including at Deportivo where he won the league, he moved to England but admits the Chelsea experience came a little too late.

'I was always a lover of the English game and I had always wanted to play there,' he says. 'But when I arrived I was already 32 and a half. So that rhythm, after playing for eight years in Spain, was really hard for me.


Jokanovic knows that war back home meant this lost opportunity for a group of young sportsmen paled into insignificance

'In Spain you look for a free man to pass to and you have so much more time to find someone than in England.

'And in that era it was still demanded that you got forward [as quickly as possible] and looked for the ball in the channel.

'Chelsea were trying to change that style with [Claudio] Ranieri and before with Gianluca Vialli but there were still teams who played that [very direct] football.

'I remember Sunderland with a guy called Niall Quinn. He got on the end of everything I used to try to climb on his back but it was no use I still couldn't reach the ball.

'They treated me really well at Chelsea. And it helped me a lot in terms of preparing for my career as a coach in England.'


Jokanovic runs with the ball whilst playing for Yugoslavia in Euro 2000 against Norway

He is the only foreign manager to get two sides promoted to the Premier League and he is proud of both achievements, especially Fulham.

'At Watford there were a lot of things already in place,' he says. 'But at Fulham it was a case of starting from zero, or if you prefer, minus-20.

'It was a gloomy club where there was no vision of returning to the Premier League.

'I did a job, in collaboration with the club and all the players. We had everyone believing that yes it was possible.'

It wasn't just a sleeves-rolled-up story either. Then-Cardiff coach Neil Warnock called Fulham the Manchester City of the Championship as they went up via the play-offs in 2018.


Jokanovic lining up to face Norway for Yugoslavia at the 2000 European Championships

He didn't last as Fulham's manager in the Premier League, replaced by Ranieri in the middle of November. The change did not save the club from the drop, doomed to pay for a chaotic summer.

'On the last Thursday five players arrived, and the league was starting on the Saturday,' he recalls.

'We had to have a new pre-season but by then we were already playing for points, and you can't do that. I tried, then Ranieri tried, then Scott Parker tried but we were all playing catch-up.'

Having shown his potential as a top coach at both Fulham and Watford, there must be unfinished business in England?

'Last summer I had opportunities but none of those offers seemed right for me. I took the decision to come here to Doha.

'Would I like to go back to England? Yes I would. But cry and get depressed because I'm not there, that's not me,' he says.

There were maybe some tears back in 1992 – for the war that caused so much suffering, and stopped such a fine generation of young players from staying together to play big tournaments.



https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-8370705/Slavisa-Jokanovic-reveals-difficulty-banned-three-major-tournaments.html

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Championship, League One & League Two clubs to meet on 8 June

Elite football in England has been suspended since 13 March

English Football League clubs are set to meet on 8 June as the league aims to rubber-stamp proposals on how to end a season early because of coronavirus.

The EFL board "unanimously" agreed upon a framework at a meeting on Wednesday, but now needs clubs to approve it.

The new framework was laid out on 21 May, including promotion, relegation and play-offs remaining.

Teams in League Two have already indicated they wish to end the season, but League One sides remain undecided.

Championship clubs, whose players returned to training on Monday, are hoping to resume their campaign in June.

Two rounds of coronavirus testing have been conducted to date across the 24 clubs in the second tier, with more than 1,000 tests carried out each time.

Two people at Hull City tested positive in the first round revealed on Sunday, while two unnamed Fulham players and Blackburn captain Elliott Bennett tested positive in the second round of results.

On Thursday, the Premier League announced a provisional restart date of 17 June with up to six games at neutral venues. The EFL said it was their intention to play all remaining fixtures at clubs' home grounds.

"At the same time as advising on its proposed approach last week, the board had asked clubs to give it appropriate consideration and provide any feedback," the EFL said in a statement.

"Communications were submitted from clubs across all divisions and those proposals, some of which have been made available publicly, suggested how the framework in the event the season is ended prematurely could alternatively work.

"A decision on whether or not to curtail the season is a matter to be considered by clubs in any affected division, but only once a framework for resolving open issues in such circumstances has been agreed by all members across all divisions through a regulation change."

Clubs have been given until next Tuesday to continue submitting any alternative proposals for how the framework could work.

A 51% majority of clubs in the Championship, League One and League Two is required to approve the curtailment of the campaign in each division.

Currently, unweighted points-per-game would decide final league placings in all three divisions if the respective seasons cannot be completed.

Meanwhile, the National League will await a decision by the EFL on how to conclude the League Two campaign before deciding their next steps.

The regular season is over at non-league level, but the National League wants to preserve two teams being promoted into the EFL and that may involve play-off games being staged.



https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/52847826