It's time for 'The Magic of the Cup'

     

                                                                Wednesday   -v-  Fulham

This weeks quote is from British Academic, Writer and Christian Apologist C. S. Lewis: Faith... is the art of holding on to things your reason once accepted, despite your changing moods.

No one changes their moods more often than than a football fan and no one loses and regains their faith quicker than a football fan but can Wednesday be inspired by 'The Magic of the Cup'?
Ticket prices are lowered for the game, we have Premier League opposition so there's no excuses for a low crowd...just how much magic will the Owls need to overcome their London opponents?

STAT'S

                                   Championship      13 WEDNESDAY    26   9   7   10  25   37    -12  34
                                   Premier League      9 Fulham              19   6   8     5   18   14       4  26

                                     2001 Championship    Fulham               1-1     WEDNESDAY
                                     2000 Championship    WEDNESDAY     3-3     Fulham 

                                     1985 FA Cup                  Fulham               2-3     WEDNESDAY
                                     1984 League Cup        WEDNESDAY     3-2     Fulham
                                     1984 Division 2 (old)   WEDNESDAY      1-1    Fulham
                                     1983 Division 2 (old)   Fulham                1-1    WEDNESDAY

 

WEDNESDAY Last 6 Homes			-	Fulham Last 6 Aways
Blackpool	D	1-1		Tottenham	D	0-0
Bristol	D	0-0		Stoke	D	0-0
QPR	W	1-0		Villa	D	0-0
Norwich	W	3-2		Liverpool	D	0-0
Coventry	L	0-1		Everton	L	1-0
Doncaster	W	1-0		Portsmouth	D	1-1

It’s been a while since the two clubs met last and even then it was only a brief encounter as Fulham didn’t stay around long on their way to the top flight. Backed by the cash of Harrods boss Mohamed al-Fayed they’ve made a decent fist of the Premier league and against my better judgement stayed up. Both clubs have had their ups and downs over the years but recently, it's the London club that have had the more ups.

Fulham have a defensive record bettered only by the top 3 in the Premier League and even then, not by much, so to say this is going to be a difficult game for Wednesday, who find it difficult to score against teams in our own division, including Coventry in the last game who hadn’t kept a clean sheet since September.
Even worse for us is the fact that Fulham have only conceded 2 goals in their last 6 away games and NONE in the last four.

On the plus side for us is our home record…it may not be pretty to watch but teams don’t turn us over at home.
It’s almost like we bore them to death.
Looking at the stat’s and scorelines above you’d think this had 0-0 written all over it or at best a single goal either way but going by Wednesday’s play of late and lack of bite up front and more importantly in the centre midfield, there’s no way this will be a 0-0 and we’ll do very well to keep the score low.


KEY PLAYERS

                                 Richard Wood                                                            Clint Dempsey

Where do you start here?
First of all, I’m not even going down the road of ‘will they play a second team’ route…let’s just assume they want to win this and do it easily and will play their best team…even though a glimpse at their squad shows more than one line up capable of trouncing our threadbare squad.

They may not be a glamour club in the Premier League and some fans may get all snotty and look down on them but they have quality all through the side and it’s head, shoulders, waist and knees above what we have…
OK, the strikers Andy Johnson and Bobby Zamora may not be banging them in against top level defences but we’ve seen both at Hillsborough in the not too distant past and have given us a hard time, especially Zamora who is wonderful to watch at his best but it’s the midfield we need to keep an eye on.

We can’t compete in this area at our own level so I really can’t see us getting much joy against the likes of international and former international players; Jimmy Bullard, Clint Dempsey, Danny Murphy, Zoltan Gera and Fulhams player of the year last year Simon Davies….Oh yeah, and waiting in the wings they have the likes of Dickson Etuhu
For a start every one of those players has goals in them and ass to that each of them being capable of running rings round our midfield and defence almost single-handedly and it’s obvious you could pick any of them as THE key player for Fulham….So, let’s go with ‘The Deuce’….That’s CLINT DEMPSEY to you and me.

The former MLS player of the season Clint Dempsey happens to be the clubs joint top scorer (Along with Andy Johnson) for this season. He joined Fulham three years ago this month and after a year working his way into the team he’s become an integral part now, with 36 appearances last season. This season he’s made 9 starts and 7 as sub scoring 4 goals.
he can play on the wing or up front and whether he starts or comes on late our full backs are going to be turned inside out.

So who do we have that can play a key role for us today?
Well….the likes of Marcus Tudgay MUST put a shift in and not get all sulky…if he hides then we will get mullered.
How about Franny Jeffers?
Yep! He has a crucial role to play today…whether on at the start, which I sincerely hope he is, or on as sub, he’s about the only player we have that has skills in the locker to match those of the Fulham players…whether he has the same mental state as the Fulham players is another thing altogether.

Because we’re going to be under the cosh for quite a lot of this game AND because there’s been questions asked by some sections of the Wednesday ‘faithful’ then the crucial player for Wednesday is RICHARD WOOD.
We knew the question of his transfer to Coventry would rear its head again once the window came round and so it has, ironically, none more so than the recent game AGAINST Coventry. He can go some way to silencing his critics in the crowd by being vocal and commanding, keeping the line at the back tight and under control. Not many will expect too much from this game, the defence can keep things respectful at worst and Woody has the


5 Fully Functional Fulham Facts

1  Fulham Football club was founded in 1879 as "Fulham St Andrew's Church Sunday School, making them the oldest professional football club in thatLondon.

2  Fulham were admitted to the football league in 1907, and their first season can only be described as a mixed bag. After losing their first game, they recovered quickly and finished just shy of promotion, in fourth place. A lengthy FA cup run punctuated this season, the highlight of which was an 8-3 mullering of Luton Town. The run came to an end at the semi final, where Newcastle United humbled them 6-0, which to this day holds the record for the heaviest defeat in an FA cup semi final.

3  The 1970's saw Fulham make some pretty high profile signings, with Alan Mullery returning from Tottenham to Craven Cottage, where he began his career, and Bobby Moore who had made over 500 appearances across town at Upton Park. These signings helped Fulham to their only ever appearance in the FA cup final, in 1975, where they were defeated by West Ham. 

4  The 1975 FA cup run was also a record breaker for Fulham, they took 11 games including replays to make the final, which is unlikely to ever be beaten, with the current maximum of one replay permitted before extra time and penalties.

5  Despite an illustrious managerial career spanning 33 years, Roy Hodgson has only won 2 domestic cup competitions, the Svenska Cupen with FF Malmo in 1986 and 1989.

CLUB BADGE

Fulham have gone for the simplistic approach when they changed their badge…described by one fan as ‘a swastika on the toilet’ here’s the comments from a fan from a Fulham messageboard…

“It is time this week to pause closer to home to ensure that we don’t forget to give a deserved metaphorical kicking to Fulham’s club crest. Inspected from every angle, this is a triumph of substance over style. The three letters that tell us we are in the presence of Fulham Football Club appear to have been ejected from a plane and left to fend for themselves. The monochrome background of the club’s colours assists with the ground-breaking level of tedium attained by this crest – the only way the image could be any more life-sappingly dull is if the letters were straightened and rendered in the Standard Courier New font. It is almost as if a committee of graphic designers spent nine months researching a new logo until they ran out of ideas and then attempted to represent this absence of ideas in pictorial form. Apparently nothing leapt out to them from Fulham’s 112-year history or location and three wonky letters was agreed as the final draft. The club, clearly assured that image-free images were the future and that all the most intelligent and stylish clubs were adopting them, signed up to the debacle. Why a nice little cottage with a cherry tree in the garden wouldn’t have done is anyone’s guess.”

Fulham Forums

Official Fulham Messageboard

SUMMARY
    
Let’s be brutally honest here we can’t win this game can we?
I know, I know, it’s all negative and whatnot, but we have to be honest here…
If anyone is thinking ‘It’s only Fulham, it’s not like they’re a decent Premier league team’ well, think again, they are just that, a decent Premier team.
They have quality throughout the squad and are a long way in front of us and anyone else in our division…we have trouble playing the best teams at Championship level, hell, we have trouble beating the worst teams at this level so we have no right to run down the likes of Fulham. Woy Hodgson has turned this club around since taking over and I don’t mind admitting, he’s proven me wrong, as I thought he would fail spectacularly.
They may not be a flair side compared to others but they are a very tight unit and one built on the old fashioned principle of a strong back line, ‘If you don’t concede, you don’t lose’.
I expect them to be way too strong for us in all departments…Our strikers are struggling at the moment so will find things difficult against a stight defence and our midfield has been like case hardened cheese of late so with the strength in depth Fulham have, I can’t see us getting a look in there…up front they have two quick and skilful strikers… though, having said that, a plus, if you can call it one, is that they are one of the worst in their division for goalscoring, with only two sides worse than them…but that’s against very good opposition isn’t it?

Sweet baby Jeebers….how bad does that sound?
You’d think we were playing Man Utd, Real Madrid and the entire Brazil squad from 1954 to present day instead of a mediocre Premier League side….well we might as well to be perfectly honest.

The ONLY chance we have of getting ANYTHING from this game is if our players are in the faces of Fulham from the first whistle to the last AND Fulham have an off day….
When you consider that we haven’t been in the faces of anyone for around 8 years now it’s not too difficult to get despondent about it all.

It’s cracking news that both Lewis Buxton AND Bartoz Slusarski are free to play in this cup match and god only knows what we’d be like without them but it just won’t be enough. As much as I like the two players and as much as I’m usually optimistic, often blindly so, I simply cannot see us being able to cope with Fulham on any level.

The only people that think we can actually win this are the mentally ill, the blindly optimistic and those that have not seen us play recently.

At least we can ‘concentrate on the league’ once this is over.

PREDICTION
    
If we score it will be a huge bonus but seeing how the likes of Villa, Everton and Liverpool struggled to find the net, it looks even more remote for us.
Our best hope is to hang on til half time…get in at 0-0 and see what happens….however I expect them to take things steady, not fret about things if they don’t go their way. If they aren’t up by half time, then not only will it be a surprise but they won’t be too phased by it and will stick to the plan.

I’ll go for a result of 3-0 to Fulham on the back of a 1-0 half time lead.


BETTING

Click the banner to go straight to Paddy Power

Win – Draw – Win

WEDNESDAY      23/10                         Draw      23/10                       Fulham      6/5

Draw no bet
(Bet void if draw)
WEDNESDAY        11/8                          Fulham    8/15

To qualify for next round
WEDNESDAY         6/4                           Fulham       1/2

Handicap Betting
WEDNESDAY (+1.0)      4/6                  Draw (1.0) 13/5                     Fulham (-1.0)     10/3


Half time/Full Time
WEDNESDAY / WEDNESDAY   11/2
WEDNESDAY/ Draw                   12/1
WEDNESDAY/ Fulham               25/1
Fulham / Fulham                          5/2
Fulham / Draw                            12/1

CORRECT SCORE
WEDNESDAY      1-0      8/1                  Draw      0-0                             Fulham     1-0      11/2
WEDNESDAY      2-0      18/1                Draw      1-1                             Fulham     2-0      17/2
WEDNESDAY      2-1      10/1                                                                   Fulham     3-0      19/1


To Score 2 or More Goals

Tudgay                           20/1                  A Johnson          9/1
Clarke                            25/1                  Zamora              17/1
Jeffers                            25/1                  Dempsey          18/1
Slusarski                       25/1                  Nevland             20/1

To win either half
WEDNESDAY                  5/4                  Fulham              4/7

To Win to Nil
WEDNESDAY                  5/1                  Fulham              5/2

Betting Summary

Going by recent form then all bets must concern Fulham and by how many they'll win by and TBF, there's some decent bets about them, not least the simplest, Fulham to win at 6/5.
Given the gulf between the two clubs, and how Wendesday have been playing of late, odds against looks a steal.

5/2 for Fulham to win to nil is another stand out bet but as I think Fulham will win by more than one goal I'll try and steal a bit extra and the handicap betting is bet of the week.

Handicap Betting
Fulham (-1.0) 10/3

Whatever happens, only bet as much as you can afford to lose, good luck and if you're traveling to the game, stay safe.

Cheers
Steve:Beastie

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