Reading through the pre-season preview pull-outs in the weekend’s papers was fairly depressing experience. All of the pundits seem to be predicting that Fulham will be plummeting out of the Premiership, with no questions asked. The Sun reckons Fulham are ‘dead certs’ for the drop. The Mirror says the ‘smart money’ has to be on Fulham to go down. And the Mail believes Chris Coleman could be ‘out of his depth’. Today’s Guardian is more measured, but suggests Mohamed Al-Fayed’s cost-cutting approach won’t be successful, and cites Coleman’s 5/1 odds to be the first manager to lose his job, and that the books have the Whites at 9/4 to go down.
All of this won’t bother Coleman, who will probably have pinned all of the quotes up on a wall at Motspur Park somewhere to motivate his charges. The Premiership’s youngest ever manager was derided when he was given the job of keeping the club up after Jean Tigana’s departure in April – and will revel in the role of proving the talking heads wrong once again.
