F in Fulham

“Let’s all laugh at Fulham” was one song I thought I’d never hear in England (apart from at Loftus Road) but it seems that the Cottagers are quickly becoming the butt of jokes due to the going’s on at Craven Cottage.  Our roving reporter, Mike Miles, took the short trip to West London last week to see what was going on.

Fulham 0 Wolverhampton Wanderers 1 – Craven Cottage – Saturday 20th August 2014
Craven Cottage is only a 40-minute walk alongside the Thames from my Chiswick home, and for that reason alone has long been one of my favorite grounds to visit. Fulham were the last team to have standing accommodation in the Premier League, as Craven Cottage included terraces as late as the 2001/02 season-eight years after the Taylor Report outlawed terraces at that level. I have a fond memory of seeing Freddie Kanoute score a winner for West Ham whilst standing at the Putney End.

As with terracing, the statue of Michael Jackson, like its subject, is alas no longer with us. The original Craven Cottage site was covered in woodlands, and allegedly, one plane tree survives today in a corner of the Putney End, the sole tree to be found in any senior British senior football stadium. Not the least of Craven Cottage’s continuing charms is the Johnny Haynes Stand. This wonderful structure is the oldest remaining football stand in the Football League, originally built in 1905 , designed by Archibald Leitch,  and is even a Grade 11 listed building. It even features the original wooden seating. You may not be as comfortable as in say The Emirates, but you are sitting on history.

Alas the current team show no signs of matching their historical surroundings. Pointless and ponderous, this is not how the season was meant to begin for Fulham. The club that slipped out of the Premier League in May are now joint bottom of the Championship after three matches, the latest defeat inflicted by an accomplished Wolves side who secured victory thanks to Bakary Sako’s early effort.

A penny for the thoughts of Shahid Khan the Fulham owner who was making one of his infrequent visits to the Cottage. It has been a summer of upheaval at the Cottage – skipper Scott Parker was the only player to start here who featured on the day Fulham were relegated at Stoke – and the results so far have been disappointing. £11 million was spent on Ross McCormack, but he was a pale imitation of the striker who had scored 29 goals for Leeds United last season.

There were some glimpses of quality but the new players and many youngsters have yet to gel. This division is no place for rookies to learn their game. In the end, Sako’s goal was enough but Fulham were in more danger of conceding again than scoring an equaliser, surviving a late penalty miss from Sako who hit the post in injury time.

Predictable cries of “Felix Out” (Fulham fans are a very polite lot) greeted the final whistle. And though I would willingly make that 40-minute walk to the Cottage again, I have a feeling it will be to see a Fulham team playing under yet another manager. Since Roy Hodgson took the Cottagers to the Europa Cup Final in 2010 they have had four managers, including three in 2013/14 alone, and the cumulative effect of all this chopping and changing was relegation to the Championship. Based on tonight’s abject performance they could be taking a similar downward trajectory to that once experienced by tonight’s visitors.