Arse preview

Fitting that I write my first league preview of the season right before the last game? Well, I had to after yesterday’s news revealed:

“Given it was the final day of the season, when we always play all our matches at the same time for reasons of integrity, and being mindful of the travel plans supporters will have made, the board felt it wasn’t appropriate to move the Arsenal-Fulham match.”

Right, Premier League. It’s all about the supporters and tradition. Because, you know, changing travel plans for a 10-mile journey across London with two days notice is just too much. As the great poet T.S. Eliot once wrote: “A tradition without intelligence is not worth having.” How ironic that an Englishman would pen that.

And then there’s this wonderful nugget is the ESPNSoccernet story:

The decision raises the possibility that Fulham could turn to their youth players. Middlesbrough famously fielded a first XI of players born in the local area ahead of their 2006 UEFA Cup final against Sevilla.

Woah now! Wayne Brown? Matty Briggs? Michael Uwezu?!? With that assertion, I’m now taking bets on the starting XI. Here are my picks:

Stockdale
Marsh-Brown–Smalling–Smith–Briggs
Buchtmann–Brown–Andranik–Moscatiello
Uwezu–Okaka

And three points are in the bag without a sweat!

Okay, maybe not. But no way does Roy field a full XI as I’m sure the varsity team is en route to Hamburg already. Which is a shame because Fulham at full strength stack up quite well with Arsenal. How so? Consider this as another example of Roy’s impact: Arsenal have scored just once in the past 3 encounters; and they traditionally run riot over us.

Throw into that equation Arsenal’s recent collapse. They’ve won once league game since Easter Vigil, and four times since March began — over the tough, tough opponents of Burnley, Hull, West Ham, and Wolves. And they’ve kept just three clean sheets in the process. (Granted, our record over that time span isn’t much better but there are different expectations for the Big Four. Right?)

And so, we’ll probably draw 0-0. As long as we’re ahead of Stoke and Blackburn in the final league table, for humanity’s sake, I’ll be okay with it.

Spurs probably wished we would’ve played on Saturday because had we both won, then it’s straight to the group stages for Tottenham! But now the dream is over. In typical British journalist fashion (which means no quotes or attribution), there’s this from yesterday’s Daily Mail:

But Spurs, who sealed fourth place by beating Manchester City, are ready to let Hodgson prepare in a way which gives Fulham the best chance of victory over Atletico Madrid in Hamburg, even if it means they must qualify for the group stages of the Champions League next season by competing in the final play-off round.

Great, more proof that league management is a joke. If this is to be taken seriously, Spurs have basically said that they didn’t want automatic qualifying anyway. Yet again, way to go EPL.

Category: Player News, Reserve News, Team News