My stomach hurts from the tension regarding the upcoming season.
This time of year is one I both love as well as hate. The weather is lovely, time is spent in beer gardens and at the beach and wherever you look there are attractive women wearing skimpy outfits to rest your eyes on. On the other hand my brain is working overtime thinking about the upcoming season. It’s obviously not the beaches, beers or scandal beauties that makes my tummy hurt. It’s the bloody football!At the moment I’m quite unsure what to think about the upcoming season.
The Squad
From the activity on the transfer market alone I get a good feeling, some good players coming in, some deadwood going the opposite direction. We have, in my eyes, both recruited some very good players, and some decent squad players. We do however pay a bit too much money for some of them. The challenge now is makeing all these new guys perform as a team. On the other hand it might be easier for Sanchez to implement his ideas and tactics to a squad that is not set in their (Colemans) ways. Another thing that bugs me is Sanchez love for Northern Irish and English players. Nothing wrong with these nationalities at all, but in a footballing sense they do not really represent good value for money, do they? What we need to do is to recruit the best possible footballers no matter what country they come from.
Formation
Based on Lawries previous coaching one can assume that we’ll be playing 4-4-2. Even if I’m no great fan of this formation I feel that we’ll get a continuity that we have lacked under Coleman. Hopefully Sanchez can get the team to perform with the same foundation both home and away.
Start of the season
It is vital that we get a good start to the season, especially away from home. Even if we did well against Arsenal last season I would rather have seen us opening to a lesser opponent. Derby, Brum Wigan etc. Anyone? What I really do not want is a start similar to the fiasco at Old Trafford a year ago.
Craven Cottage
For the third consecutive season we’ll have a higher capacity at Craven Cottage than the year before. I really like that we grow a little bit at a time rather than “overnight”. We might however have reached our maximum capacity now. If the ground should continue to grow I think the corners will have to be built in and/or the Johnny Haynes Stand rebuilt. The question is also how large fans base do we have? Will we need to increase the ground more at this point in time? This season we’ll be able to accommodate around 26.000 fans and we can hopefully do that on a regular basis and keep on building on the tremendous atmosphere from the spring.Alright, get ready for a new season of premiership footy!
We all follow the Fulham,
over land and sea (and Leicester),
we all follow the Fulham
on to vic-tory,
All together now………
Just to say that the cottage still has the capacity to grow another 1500 seats at teh hammy End – planning permission has been accepted so we can reach around 28,000 plus a new corner restaurant if we perform this year.
Oh, really! There you go! Good news, and a very appropriate size at this stage then 🙂 Thanks for the information and feedback. // Nick