How to beat Fulham (the longer answer than ‘score more goals’))

karaoke

Let us hope our wish was granted and that beating Sofia 1-0 softened Fulham up. In a detailed assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of our Sunday opponents, based on watching the Fulham game before Sofia, a fellow subscriber to the Blackcats list, Jim Minton, gives us hope that we can do something about our atrocious away form – but also warns about the minefields. He is less forthcoming on the subject of Korean karaoke …

It was my dubious pleasure to watch Fulham v Bolton last weekend in the company of a group of gentlemen who thought it would be a good idea to kick off a stag weekend watching Clint Dempsey slugging it out against Gavin McCann from the corporate boxes at Craven Cottage.

Anyway, rather than digressing into tales of late night karaoke in a Korean bar in Soho and how my rendition of Since You’ve Been Gone came to cruelly curtailed for public health reasons – which is how the stag weekend ended – I thought I’d offer my thoughts on our opponents for Sunday.

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Who are you? We’re Fulham (but we’re not Lily Allen)

lily

To be honest, we were torn. Lily Allen or Roger Meloy to preview this Sunday’s game at Fulham, Steve Bruce’s latest attempt to prove to the world that Sunderland can perform on the road. Turning up at all would be an encouraging start. Anyway, Salut! Sunderland is not a site to be easily impressed by stardom so Lily was out (a choice made easier by an instant brush-off from her supPress Office). So, you’ll have to make do with her 2010 calendar, a sample from a recently published Observer interview about her football passion** – and, all the way from the USA, the thoughts of Roger*, the Cincinnati Kid and member of the Fuham Exiles fan site

rogerfulham


Salut! Sunderland:
Comfortable last season, some good results so far but a little inconsistent. A fair summary of Fulham?

A fair summary. Getting into the Europa League was a major achievement for Fulham, but with our small squad this could come back and bite us later on in the season as we’ve played a midweek game virtually every week. Our biggest problem is still our away form. We have trouble picking up points from poor teams, such as losing at Wolves and Birmingham, drawing at Wigan and West Ham. Although, the 2-2 at Man. City was a good result considering we were 0-2 down.

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