Fulham USA: US Supporters club of Fulham FC

If you read the various blogs and forums across the Fulham universe, you'll see "this is the strongest Fulham side we've had" quite often. Much like in politics, sometimes a statement is made over and over enough that it begins to take root as fact. I submit that's the case here. On paper, yeah, it probably should be. However, upon closer inspection, when you factor in age and production, maybe it really isn't. While the differences in approach to offense muddies the comparison, I submit that Mark Hughes' 2010-2011 side was the better one. Lets take a look at it position by position.

GK - Schwarzer (Stockdale) v Stekelenburg (Stockdale) - Despite his distribution issues, I give the edge to Schwarzer. Mark posted 11 clean sheets and 94 saves in 31 starts. Due to injury, we only have one game from Stekelenburg to draw an opinion. His highest clean sheet total at Roma was 7 in 29 starts. ADV - Schwarzer

RB - Paintsil/Baird v Riether - Baird had 25 starts in various...

St. James Park on Saturday was host to two teams who prefer to wear black and white, two teams who have restless supporters and managers under the microscope, and two teams for whom “entertainment” is a word they know but have trouble associating with football. For 45 minutes those two teams – Newcastle United and Fulham FC – produced a first half of football that was dire enough to send this observer to get some eye drops to wash away the memory of it. Neither team showed any inclination to take over the game, and neither showed the skill or teamwork to accomplish it even if they had the inclination. Fulham did have a good 10 minutes or so there about halfway through the first 45, but the only real shot on goal was one from The Barcodes from great distance.

In the second half, one team came out with a different attitude and different tactics, and basically took control of the match with a scintillating display of attacking football. The team that DIDN’T was Fulham. And so Fulham...

Arsenal Win Swimmingly at The CottageWell, it took me about five minutes to identify what was falling from the skies in SW London this morning – it’s been a while since we’ve had any meaningful rain, you see – but once I did realize that November had made an early visit to England’s Green and Pleasant Land, I was able to see what was going to be the telling factor in the match. When playing in conditions like that, your keepers and back four are always going to be on unsure footing. Whichever team tried to unsettle the opposing defense early and often was likely to walk away with the three points. The Gunners attacked from the beginning; Fulham didn’t. Fulham lose 1-3 and can have no grumbles about it.

The thing is that our defense had played a well organized fluent match against Sunderland last weekend, while Arsenal had fallen apart against Villa. The Gunners also had a mid-week “must win” Champions League qualifier and some key defensive injuries and suspensions. With a shaken...