Fulham Yourself If You Don't Believe It: Dempsey VI

He played pretty well, came close to scoring a few times and assisted on Zamora's goal. Hart made an excellent save on a trademark Deuce header off a corner. He appeared to have another great chance when he got a high bouncing pass over the top and was in on goal and about to shoot, but Micah Richards made a great tackle before the ball came down enough for Clint to shoot.

 

You can always at least check footytube.com for replay clips, they have a nice one for the Fulham game.

 

Clint played well; had as many shots as the rest of the team combined and drew some good saves from Hart. Most importantly, it was a big point at home against one of the top teams in Europe (just saying one of the top teams in the league seemed under-representative).

 

Dempsey is All the goals, all the moments he's been a part of.

 

Fulham face Chelsea today in the Carling Cup, and Dempsey is not in the 18. It's mostly the new signings and backups starting, with some of the regulars on the bench.

Dempsey, Murphy, Hughes and Hangeland all have the day off.

 

Spoilers:

Controversy at Stamford Bridge. 0-0 (4-3) Chelsea win on PKs after Ruiz's attempt hits the crossbar and bounces straight down. The official calls it a save but the replay I saw was inconclusive.

 

No controversy. The replay from behind the goal was very clear - it wasn't a goal.

I thought the Fulham youngsters played very well, often outplaying a team consisting of many Chelscum starters. It bodes well as the team is much deeper now than during their last Europa League run.

 

Maybe this time he'll start in the Final.

 

What's the explanation on the rather lackluster start to the season? All of their regulars are healthy and they have some nice added depth. Ruiz won't take long to adapt. Any chance they may have more success in Europe than domestically this season?

 

Many lower percentage shots on goal, no goals.

Some rather fluky goals against and a new 4-3-3 system where at least a few players simply dont know which position they are playing. They seem to work the ball quite well to the perimeter of the box, then lack runners and final pass for the goal. Dempsey takes the shot. Dembele dances around. AJ falls down. Zamora loses the ball. Duff sends cross into no one, etc etc.

If by Christmas they dont figure out how to play Jol's system or Jol doesnt figure out how to organize his team things will get ugly.

 

an already old team is another year older..

 

I think the problem is that some of the players who've previously formed the core of the team (i.e. Murphy, Davies, etc) have become to various extents a little less reliable due to age. There's still a good core of Zamora, Hangeland, Dempsey and Schwarzer,but given that in Premiership terms the rest of the team isn't that inspiring it's not quite enough. Jol will hope the new signings, particularly Ruiz, will be able to intergrate in to the core, but it's still very early days and none of the new signings have exactly had flying starts.

Also there's plenty of other good Premiership teams out there, I don't think Fulham squadwise are signifcantly better than any of the Premiership teams returnign from last season. And not to forget that the new boys of Swansea, Norwich and QPR are repeating the pattern so often seen in the last few seaosns for newly promoted teams of getting off to pretty respectable starts due in parts to being unknown quantities and the excitement of playing in the Prem.

I think what'll happen utlimately is that the Premieship new boys will fade as the season progresses. Fulham will either start to improve and have another season of middle table respectivabilty/mediocirty (however you want to look at it) or not improve enough and get involved in the relegation dogfight, but still stand a good chance of stying up.

 

I actually think quite the opposite... there are a number of established premiership sides this year that are in real trouble of going down. IMO Norwich, QPR are good enough to stay up this year because of their ability to play some nice football.. Swansea maybe a relegation target but I think this year is diff from the last few as the newly promoted teams look very talented and about 4-5 regular squads look like shiite.

 

Yes, but again playing nice football is still just following the pattern of recent years. How many times have we seen newly-promoted teams crash and burn in the later on in the season after getting decent results and playing attractive football in the first part of the season. In the end what it comes down to is talent deficieency, it's unfortunate but without the squad playing good football isn't a longterm Premeirship survival strategy. The reason that so many long term Premiership strugglers play percentages is that it's a better long term strategy.

Norwich IMO are particualry vulnerable to this, as they haven't even made that many big improvements to their squad since coming from League One. Their current squad would be nothing to be excited about in the Championship.

QPR are less vulenrable as they had what was a very good Championship squad and they've made some big signings

 

I actually think Jol has done a good job of injecting some youth into Fulham. They outplayed their opponents in three of their draws, so it's just a matter of time and the wins will come.

 

Am I the only one that doesn't understand the thread title?

Is it meant to be "Foolin' yourself?"

 

Ummmmm.....yes.

 

Yes. You're a troubled young man I can tell ...

 

I got the foolin' yourself part, but what the heck might I be a fool not to believe? That goal.com sucks and therefore Dempsey is still at Fulham?

 

I see where you're coming from and while I agree I still think this year is different because of how poor Fulham, Bolton, Blackburn, WBA, Wigan and even a couple others have looked. I think this year is as good as any for at least 2 of the new boys to stick around at least for another campaign... I see no diff. talent wise between all of those teams I just mentioned.

Now of course a couple of those squads will probably end up turning around and making a run or two up the table, but I just have a different feeling about the bottom feeders vs promoted squads this year.

 

Possibly troubled. Not young.

This. What does it mean?

 

In that twisted way that YA puns up thread titles, this one is based on this song by Styx.

 

Oh. Well I hate that band with the white hot fire of 10,000 suns. So, I feel better about not getting it now. Almost cool, even.

 

I think the "don't believe it" part came from all the Dempsey transfer rumors, especially the Dempsey to Arsenal rumor, some were almost belligerent in their disbelief.

You're probably not troubled, sorry about the Styx lyric.

 

I feel like killing someone everytime I see the thread title "Timmay too"

I mean what the ******** is that?