Interesting snippets from Ian Pearce here on his curious little Fulham career. Bought as centre back cover at a time when funds were scarce for Chris Coleman, he feels he didn’t do himself justice at Craven Cottage.

I don’t really know why that was. I started badly and didn’t really recover the form I’d had before at Blackburn and West Ham.

I picked up injuries and it always seemed to be stop-start. It just didn’t happen for me and although I loved the club, I have to admit it was the worst spell of my career.

I wasn’t a great communicator. Things are different now because I’m trying to get into media work, but I didn’t speak to the press then and that maybe didn’t help my cause. The thing is that at Blackburn and West Ham, my performances were OK and spoke for themselves, but that wasn’t the case here.

Pearce always seemed something of a stopgap too me. The likes of Alain Goma and Phillipe Christanval, who were in and around the Fulham first team before and during his time at the club, were infinitely better technically, but Pearce could be relied on a physical battle. I was surprised to read that he made as many as 62 appearances for Fulham and, of course, the abiding memory has to be that one-legged equaliser as he stumbled around at the wrong end of the pitch against Portsmouth.