The future of FFC

Tim, there is information that a sizeable portion of Fulham's debt is owed to MAF himself...hopefully he doesn't call the club on it.

 

I guess that's a little comforting, in that we won't have external creditors coming knocking on the door. Still, not a great position to be in. Is this going to cause problems under Financial Fair Play?

 

Financial Fair Play's a joke as long as Man City is owned by Sheikh Monsour.

 

Most that debt also came during our run up to the premier league and into the first couple of years into the league. We have actually done really well with our money the last eight years or so. This is only going to improve as our income increases with the expansion and more success.

 

Courtesy of White Noise, very interesting panel discussion (well worth the 6 minutes) about Fulham.

http://www.lifesapitch.co.uk/laptv/fulh ... achievers/

 

The recent promotions of Brendan Rogers and Paul Lambert (both deserving, IMHO) got me thinking. Could we hold on to a manager who got us into the CL?

 

Yes, we could. Why go to another club when we are already in the Champions League. At that point they have nothing on us, but history.

 

We have zero shot at Champions League or making a "Newcastle-like" run. There simply aren't anywhere near enough goals in the side for us to push that far up the table. In the 5-1/2 yrs I've followed the club, we've gone into every transfer window saying we need a striker or two and yet the club never make a serious attempt to address the issue. We took a shot on a crocked AJ, and that appeared to eat up whatever wages we were willing to put into a front line striker. We took a flyer on Zamora (w Paintsil) and he put together one decent season before going down to injury & then a hissy. Most recently we brought in Pog and he feasted on some crap defenses before turning up on a milk carton. Dembele turned out to be a midfielder and Ruiz looks to be on the same course. I think Ruiz can create more offense than Dembele, but I don't see him as more than a 4-6 goals a year threat, but rather as a facilitator.

Financially, I think Fulham should finish between 12th-14th most years relative to what the teams around us spend. I believe we should be able to push for a top 10 finish every other year and maybe we can nick a 6th or 7th once every 4-5 years. Stability in management would go a long way to making that happen, assuming we get/have the right guy. For me, the jury is still out on Jol. People are quick to credit him for transforming the way we play, but we netted fewer goals than the year prior and if you take Dempsey out of the equation, it's frighteningly anemic.

This summer will answer a lot of questions. First, do we bring in a serious striker candidate (or 2) or at least take a flyer on a Fletcher type, who has proven he can net double digit goals? We haven't had a striker do that in the Prem since I've followed the club. Then there's the issue with the Dem's. Losing Moussa doesn't particularly worry me. He has a unique skill set and can create space for other players, but more often than not, what he does provides no end product. A center mid with a different skill set could actually benefit us more, but w/o providing all of the ooh's & aah's. Take Murphy for example. His impact on our offense, as it pertains to goals, has been far more significant than Dembele's. Losing Dempsey, however, will be potentially crippling. The offense he scores and creates (23 of our 43 goals, and that only tallies primary assists, not all of the secondary ones he created) is significant & as shown from every transfer we've done in the last 5 years, not easily replaced by Mackintosh and Co.

Obviously we'll see what happens this summer, but I suspect we're more likely in for a decline than to be on the rise. For me, those odds correlate directly to our odds of keeping Dempsey. And whether Jol brings in more Euros who need a year to adjust to the league.

 

Does anyone know what this Oranje thing is that's kn Fulhams webssite. I clicked kn it but it just says to.register

 

Speculation is that either the new away strip or third strip will be orange next season...

 

It's being unveiled tomorrow (6/6) if I'm not mistaken.

 

Given today's developments, i.e, losing in a domestic competition that we, theoretically, have a better chance to win than the Premiership, and losing one of our best players, I thought I'd resurrect this topic. Given that the week could get much worse before it gets better, I'm not feeling the warm and fuzzies all of a sudden. Anybody wanna try and make me feel better before we lose Deuce and get, oh, I don't know, some guy named Richardson from Sunderland? Excuse me while I scour the house for a beer and a valium.

 

If we sign players like Gomis and Adam then we will continue our rise. We can handle losing players if we replace them with quality players, If we replace them with average players then it's back to the Coleman era. It's really that simple. These next few days should tell us everything we need to know about the future of this club.

That being said, if Mo can't take us further then he might need to bring in another owner or something. I have said this in the past, but it is beginning to be obvious that we have hit a plateau. I love what he has done for us, but the new premier league has teams as small as QPR spending loads of cash. We need similar funds probably to stay where we are. I don't want to go back to the Coleman era because that era was extremely depressing.

 

That may be slightly harsh Heather we did get Ruiz and AJ :shock: ! Oh well, at least we'll be on pins a needles until Friday evening.

 

Well having supported this club for nearly 60 years I have seen lots of things go on, but today was one of the worst. Lets face it if Fulham is going to win anything it is the cup where the big guys play their reserve teams, oh that's gone for another year. Then after having such a wonderful start to the season we then sell what many myself included think is our best player, to a team that will no doubt now take 6 points off of us with his help. But after spending 60 years of heartache watching and waiting for that day when Fulham actually wins something you have to understand if you are new to Fulham that we are just the little family club by the river, we have always been considered that by the media and general footballing public in the UK and when we shoot ourselves in the foot as we did today we prove them right. There are lots of ways we can look at this, is Jol a hard man to work for so everyone wants to abandon ship when they can, is Mo trying to make as much as he can out of his assets, the one thing I think we can all be sure of is they don't care about the supporters, because offloading your best players as they have done so does not imply that you care what product you put out on the field. Now we will no doubt hear after losing that Jol will say his number one target is 40 points to keep us safe, I think we can all ask now why, so we can continually watch a inferior product put on the field, yes we may win the big game here and there, but at least with D and D out there you felt there were some players with flair and entertaining, which always seems to be overlooked these days, in my day Fulham did not win much, but it was FUN to go to the cottage and watch them, you were always entertained, now you feel like nobody cares if they play good football just as long as survival in the top echelon is attained as soon as possible. The future of FFC is the same as it as been for many seasons past 40 points asap, and who cares how we get them. Sorry day for us fans.

 

I imagine you've seen a lot more heartbreak with FFC than any of us can imagine- and I agree with most of what you said. I think that "little family club by the river" vibe, ironically actually was one of the things that made me support Fulham in the first place ( that and their support of American players, Boca and McBride were key members of the side at the time... I studied abroad in West London and could've supported Fulham or Chelsea...). I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but at the same time- coming thisclose to winning the Europa League in 2010, just raised my expectations to the point where I forgot about the Great Escape and the realities of supporting a "smaller" club. I want to win, but without becoming a soulless machine like Man U or Chelsea or like Man City has become (not coincidentally, those clubs have won the last 8 Premier League titles- if you add Arsenal to that group, which isn't a stretch- it becomes the last 17).

I'm still afraid that you're right and that Jol and Al Fayed's new goal becomes "survival" and "40 points", which I think is several steps backwards. We've finished in the Top 10 three of the last four years (and the year we didn't, we finished 12th and made it to a major European final) and it's safe to say this is a Golden Age for Fulham- losing both Dempsey and Dembele is a huge blow. I think Ruiz is entertaining to watch and will be improved this year, I think Petric can score some big goals and that Captain K, Frei (and maybe even Trotta) will be good youngsters that will be a joy to watch- but with Murphy, Etuhu, Dempsey and Dembele leaving, we've lost a ton of depth in our midfield (which doesn't bold well for an FA Cup run), we still have quality in the likes of Ruiz, Duff, Special K and Frei- but Special K and Frei are mostly unknown commodities. I have a ton of respect for Simon Davies, but I'm not sure he can hack it anymore and I'm just not comfortable with our options of the bench being Davies and Kasami. There's a few more days in the window- but obviously today is not a day that breeds optimism. The cups are really the only silverware we can hope for and getting bounced out of the league Cup early two years in a row hurts...

Your pessimism is well-earned, but I'm sure you're hoping (as am I) that Jol and Al Fayed and the men on the pitch prove us wrong...

~ Steve

 

We know our future as a club. We have an incompetent director who has no clue what he's doing. Sounds like we were unlucky with some players not wanting to join, but it also sounds like we have left a lot of deals late and, as a result, didn't sign those players. This seems to happen every transfer window and it's really unacceptable. I trust Jol with the things on the pitch, I do not trust those making the deals.

And maybe we are broke. We have gained £21m from the Dempsey and Dembele transfers and have only spent £8m. I like some of the signings, but we didn't replace Dempsey and Dembele. That should have been the entire goal. They were the driving force of our attack and now we not only lost them, but have nobody to do the same things they did. This reminds me of when we sold Boa Morte and Malbranque and didn't replace them. We ended up in a relegation battle because we didn't replace our best players. We probably won't do the same, but we have a tough task to stay where we are and have probably fallen behind some teams.


We have to keep up with the rest of the league and that means spending money. If we can't do that, then we'll always be that small club by the river. I know we can do better. What's so disappointing is that we were so close to breaking into the top 7 and now we have taken steps backwards. I'm not pissed, I'm disappointed.

Might be time for some vodka.

 

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