EPL Talk » Lawrie Sanchez

Fulham Continue To Progress Under Hodgson

Paul Bestall — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:45:46 +0000

Why doesn’t Roy Hodgson get the credit he deserves in the United Kingdom? As I’ve mentioned before, In Scandinavia and Italy, he’s held in high regard, in Britain people point to his sacking at Blackburn Rovers back in1997. With 33 points gained so far this season, Fulham are one win away from emulating their points total for last season already.Hodgson is a class act, he knows his football, his list of contacts stretches world wide.

Fulham, under Hodgson, have begun to repair the damage that Lawrie Sanchez’s reign presided over, as Hodgson has looked to ship out some of the deadwood that arrived during the former Northern Ireland managers spell. Sanchez’s problem seemed to be his obsession with signing players he’d worked with at Northern Ireland, tallied with a depressing addiction to long ball football and a high defensive line, whilst using defenders not blessed with pace.

This season, after keeping them up by the skin or their teeth last year, has seen Hodgson add to the canny signings he made in the transfer window of 2008. Capturing the new strike force of Andrew Johnson and Bobby Zamora in the summer has been key to allowing Hodgson to implement his footballing philosophy on the Cottagers. Johnson with his pace and eye for key combined with Zamora’s strength and ability to hold the ball up has given them a new dimension, it allows Fulham to break and bring more players in to attacking positions. With Danny Murphy and Simon Davies resurgent this year, their seems to be no worrying about a relegation scrap, simply looking to finish as high as possible in the Premiership. They could even possible match or surpass their best Premiership finish of 9th, which was earned under Chris Coleman in 2004.

With the tightness of the Premierships bottom 14 sides, 7th is not beyond Hodgson and his Fulham side, they showed just how much better they are than the bottom side West Bromich on Sunday with an impressive footballing display. 2-0 frankly flattered West Brom, they were never in the game, Danny Murphy imperious in a midfield display that harked back to his days for Liverpool and England. An F.A. Cup Quarter Final against Manchester United awaits in March. The transfer of Jimmy Bullard now looks a masterstroke.

Yet there is still room for improvement. Whilst their home record is currently the 2nd best in the Premiership, they share an unenviable record with Stoke City in not achieving an away win this season with only 6 draws and 3 goals scored in 13 matches away from Craven Cottage. A decent away record could have seen them challenging Everton and Arsenal for a UEFA cup spot. That said though, they’ve earned impressive draws at Liverpool, Tottenham and Aston Villa, if Hodgson can nick a couple of away wins towards the back end of the season at say Bolton Wanderers, Manchester City and Newcastle who knows where they could end up.

Hodgson knows his team need strengthening in the summer, a striker to compliment Zamora and Johnson is paramount, when fit and available, they’ve started every single game and more midfield depth to cover his first choice combination of Murphy, Davies, Dempsey and Gera. The return to form of Ethuhu and the loan signing of Olivier Dacourt shows where Hodgson needs to add options. The back four could also do with more depth, as the back four seems to pick itself currently.

Allied with another expansion of the stadium, it seems 4000 seats are to be added, a top ten finish can give them something to build on. The board of Fulham keep increasing the capacity where they can as they try to push it up to 30,000. The Hammersmith End is ripe for increased capacity and will add vital revenue to the clubs coffers.

Fulham can be pleased with their progression this season, but Hodgson and the fans know they need to start winning games away from Craven Cottage for real progress to be made.

Hodgson Looks To Build On The Great Escape

Paul Bestall — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:19:52 +0000

Roy Hodgson is one of the great unsung English managers of the last 30 years and I’m a big fan of England’s most underrated manager.

A polite, erudite professor of the game and an intelligent, well spoken man, he’s simply never received the recognition his career and achievements deserve in England due to the majority of his success being on foreign shores. When he was installed as Lawrie Sanchez’s successor at Fulham, it would be fair to say that more than a few eyebrows were raised toward Craven Cottage and the consensus was that Fulham were doomed for the drop. It’s now one of the great defining moments of the 2007-2008 season when Fulham were away at Manchester City and went 2-0, the results were such at the time they were actually relegated until they scored 3 goals in the last 20 minutes and went on to survive on goal difference as their form picked up dramatically.

The European perception of Hodgson though is poles apart from his homelands opinion of him. A legend in Sweden, Finland and Switzerland, highly rated in Italy and Germany, he is every inch the renaissance man. With 7 titles under his belt in Sweden between 1976 and 1990, his move to Neuchatel Xamax in Switzerland was the defining period in his career, his success at domestic level convincing the Swiss FA to make him the national teams manager, taking them to USA 94 and getting through the qualification to Euro 1996, held in England. Since that period, Hodgson has been in demand by clubs and countries the world over with the exception of England due to his last period of employment in the Premiership.

All too much is made of his brief stint at Blackburn Rovers, more so his final 6 months at Blackburn, his critics point to the signing of Kevin Davies for £7.5 million as his main offence of a man out of touch with the game and abilities of players. The fact that often gets over looked about the Davies transfer is that Davies became seriously ill just weeks after joining Rovers and never recovered at Ewood Park. The self same critics also manage to forget that Davies was runner up in the Premiership Young Player of the Year award behind Michael Owen in 1997-1998 season. Suffice to say, 10 years later, Davies is still playing in the Premiership and has been one of the most consistent performers in the top league for the last few seasons. Yet people forget that Hodgson had guided Rovers back into European football in the 1997-1998 season and the Rovers board panicked when the team seemed to struggle until November when he was released from his position as manager. If they’d kept faith with him, I’ve no doubt they would have stayed up, rather than the terrible run they endured under Brian Kidd(£4.5 million for Ashley Ward anyone).

It’s this spell that has always gone against him in England, his critics never look to his success with Switzerland, the fact he almost got Finland to Euro 2008 only to fall at the final fence, his consideration to become the German manager in 1999, Massimo Moratti at Inters utmost respect for him and his reputation in Scandinavian football. When the FA failed to lure Big Phil to take over the England managers job in 2006, they should have gone to Hodgson. Instead they appointed a man that makes me angry just thinking about those wasted two years under the tactical buffoon, Perma-smile Mclaren.

There is no doubting that Hodgson is a fine manager, tactically astute and a lover of the beautiful game. He knows he’ll be under pressure this season, but I have full faith in his ability to get Fulham well away from the drop zone. He’s been the busiest manager in the transfer market so far over the summer, bringing in 10 players, including Bobby Zamora, John Pantsil, Mark Schwarzer, Andy Teymourian, Zoltan Gera and smashing Fulhams transfer record with the purchase of Andy Johnson from Everton for £10.5 million.

Fulhams biggest problem last season was creating goals and finishing teams off and he has gone about trying to rectify that fact with some shrewd signings. Adding to the bones of the team that he inherited and getting them back to playing football rather than the outdated kick and rush mess that Lawrie Sanchez had woefully tried to install will reap dividends for him and the Fulham faithful. With Johnson and Zamora up front, Bullard, Murphy and Gera pulling the strings in midfield and a steady defence, a comfortable mid-table season is on the cards at Craven Cottage. Good luck to Roy Hodgson, one of only two English managers in the modern era who should have been the England manager but never will. I’m sure Mr Clough doesn’t mind the company, they’ll both agree that Cloughie was the best.

Goodbye, Lawrie Sanchez

Michael — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 02:22:32 +0000

Another Premiership manager has bitten the dust as Fulham fired Lawrie Sanchez today with immediate effect.Sanchez joins Martin Jol, José Mourinho, Chris Hutchings, Sammy Lee, and Billy Davies as managers who started the year with a Premiership club and have been fired or have left by “mutual consent” during the season. Steve Bruce left Birmingham to join fellow relegation candidate Wigan in mid-November as well.After a decent start to the season, Fulham have struggled recently and are in 18th place in the Premiership right now. The Cottagers haven’t won since November 3 when they beat Reading and have picked up just one point in their last five league matches. To be fair though, they’ve been one of the most unlucky teams in the Premiership all season. Fulham very nearly won at Chelsea on September 29 but had to settle for a 0-0 draw, outplayed Arsenal at the Emirates for 80 minutes in the first game of the season but lost 2-1, were robbed of a point by a poor refereeing decision (what else is new?) at Middlesbrough on August 18, conceded a 90th minute goal to lose 2-1 at Aston Villa the week after the Boro loss, and on and on and on.The injury bug has also hampered Fulham, with Brian McBride’s absence due to a dislocated kneecap since that Boro defeat really limiting the options Sanchez could throw out there up front and making it much tougher for the London club to score goals. Creative midfielder Jimmy Bullard has been out for over a year with knee ligament damage but is back in training and could return to the lineup within a week or so, and McBride was no more than a month away from doing the same.Still though, the Premiership is a business and Fulham have decided to cut ties with Lawrie Sanchez and move on. This club is too talented to be relegated in my opinion, but with Sanchez gone, you’d have to believe that the Northern Irish players he brought in this summer may want to leave during the January transfer window.Former Fulham midfielder and Scotland international John Collins is now the favorite to replace Sanchez as the former just resigned from his managerial post at Hibernian. Collins is relatively young for a manager at 39 years of age and is very inexperienced as a manager, having only coached Hibs. He was at the helm for 54 games with the Hibbies and won 23 of them, with 15 draws and 16 losses as well.

The Premier League Manager Merry-go-round

The Gaffer — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:41:00 +0000

Birmingham City looks set to name Alex McLeish as their new manager in the morning. While this is a huge coup for the brummies, it give us a good indication of the money and allure that the Premier League has over international football.

After all, and no offense to Birmingham City, but McLeish did give us his position as manager of his country to take the job at St Andrews. And prior to ten to fifteen years ago, international football was a lot more respected than it is today.

In the Premiership manager merry-go-round this season, we’ve seen 6 out of the 20 clubs in the league make changes (Chelsea, Wigan, Derby, Birmingham, Bolton and Spurs). That’s 30% of the clubs changing their managers.

And because Derby sacked Billy Davies, when will the patience run out for the other managers who are near the foot of the table? Gareth Southgate at Middlesbrough and Sam Allardyce at Newcastle.

One name that hasn’t mentioned too often in relegation talk is Roy Keane at Sunderland. While the club has been playing a lot like Watford from last year (coming close to getting wins and draws but always falling at the last hurdle — the game against Everton excepted), you have to take a long look at Roy Keane and give him the chance of getting things right in the January transfer window. Otherwise, it’ll be time for him to go based on the current trend of chopping managers.

Don’t leave out Reading’s Steve Coppell and Fulham’s Lawrie Sanchez from the witch hunt list (as Arsene Wenger calls it). Both Reading and Fulham are only three points above third from bottom Sunderland.

There’s so much more money on the table this season that chairmen of Premier League clubs are getting greedy and fighting for Premiership survival.

That said, I can sympathize with all of the clubs that have sacked managers. The chairmen made the mistakes of hiring Sammy Lee and Chris Hutchings — and the other managers had lost their skill in getting the best out of players (such as Jose Mourinho, Martin Jol and Billy Davies).

Where chairmen of Premier League clubs need to do a better job is hiring the right managers for the clubs. Alex McLeish, I believe, will do a better job than Steve Bruce. Gary Megson will battle Bolton out of the relegation zone to safety but isn’t a good longterm bet. Avram Grant is boring compared to Jose Mourinho, but his team has a new lease of life without Jose. And Juande Ramos, given time, will adapt to the English game and will be a great opportunity for Spurs.

Clubs that need to be careful are Derby (Paul Ince is not a Premiership manager; let him earn some plaudits in the Championship first), Wigan (they’re doomed under Steve Bruce), Middlesbrough (a hopeless cause under Southgate but who would they bring in instead — a returning Steve McClaren perhaps?) and Newcastle (I believe Allardyce can turn it around, but will the fans and chairman be patient enough?).

Fulham, despite their poor form, are playing some good football and are creating chances. They’ll be okay.

Reading is another story entirely. Their back four still looks extremely leaky and they could really have a fight on their hands to stay up unless Coppell buys well in the transfer window.

Lawrie Sanchez Faces a Huge Mountain to Climb

The Gaffer — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:32:00 +0000

Northern Ireland manager and Fulham caretaker manager Lawrie Sanchez faces a difficult job the next few weeks on many different levels.

First, he has to somehow instill confidence in a Fulham side that hasn’t won in seven matches. With only five matches to go until the end of the season, Sanchez has little time to make a dramatic difference. Ironically, his first match is against Reading at the Majeski Stadium this Saturday. For six years, Sanchez was a player at Reading where he started his football career.

Fulham’s remaining schedule is Blackburn (h), Arsenal (a), Liverpool (h) and Middlesbrough (a). Out of those matches, Middlesbrough is the only team Fulham can beat based on the track record of the west London side.

Fulham currently has 35 points. If they win against Middlesbrough, those 38 points will probably not be enough to escape relegation, so Sanchez will need to work wonders to get points against Arsenal, Liverpool, Blackburn and Reading — all very difficult opponents.

Second, if Sanchez starts to get points from these matches, the question he’s going to get repeatedly asked by the press is whether he’ll be staying as Fulham manager and leaving Northern Ireland. The national squad doesn’t play until August, so the timing for Sanchez and Fulham is extremely convenient right now (imagine Steve McClaren temporarily managing a Premiership side, god forbid; and who would even take him if McClaren was interested).

Hopefully the anticipated antagonism by the press won’t provide Fulham and Sanchez with any unneeded pressure.

Sanchez has a huge mountain to climb in the space of five weeks. However, all Fulham needs is two wins out of their last five. If he can accomplish that, Fulham and Northern Ireland will be thankful. If he fails to do so, he’ll probably return to Northern Ireland with his tail between his legs, and the Northern Irish fans will hope that this then doesn’t have a negative impact on the country’s performance trying to qualify for Euro 2008.

Between August and November 21st when Northern Ireland plays its last Euro 2008 qualifying match, the country plays six matches — which is probably too much to ask for Sanchez to manage both Fulham and Northern Ireland. However, I’m sure Fulham is focused on the short-term right now and trying to avoid relegation. Best of luck to Sanchez in a difficult situation.

Should Chris Coleman have been sacked? If Sanchez can keep Fulham up, I think the answer is yes despite Coleman’s achievements in recent years. At the end of the day, Fulham has to stay up this season to receive the bundle of TV revenue that Premiership sides will get starting next season. Financially, Coleman’s departure may have been necessary.