[Lord Snooty]

Fulham v Huddersfield Town
The Sky Bet Championship
Saturday 1st February - 15:00 ko
at Craven Cottage

Huddersfield Town travel to London to play Fulham at Craven Cottage on Saturday afternoon looking to build on an excellent win on Tuesday night at Hull City's KCOM Stadium. We will definitely be without Kamil Grabara who left the field unconscious after lengthy treatment to be replaced by Joel Coleman. He has now been ruled out for 28 days. It's highly likely that Coleman will start this one. Manager Danny Cowley could bring in an emergency loan, but is unlikely to, as young Joel is more than capable. The trouble is we have no experienced back up in the club at the moment. We have two goalkeepers out on loan. Ben Hamer is at Derby on a season's loan and Ryan Schofield is up in Scotland with Livingston and injured anyway, so unlikely to be recalled. The only other two who could sit on the bench down at the Cottage are teenagers Jacob Chapman, who has been playing with Ossett Utd and Giosue Bellagambi, who played in the Development Squad game this week. Another keeper is Luke Mewitt, but he too is out on loan, with Hyde Utd.
Jonathan Hogg missed the game at Hull, mysteriously injured when he was expected to play. Alex Pritchard is another great big mystery. When will he be fit again? And where's big Collin Quaner?

Fulham will be without Tim Ream after he was given a straight red card on Sunday in their 0-4 FA Cup defeat at Manchester City. They will also be without the lad who started alongside him at The Etihad, that's because it's Terence Kongolo, and he's our player still. Not even Huddersfield Town are daft enough to let that happen!  

Apologies if you've read most of the following piffle before as I did the thread for the home match as well. More volunteers required please. You know you want to. You don't have to do such a massive load like this.  

TICKET PRICES:
£30 - Adults
£25 – Over-65s
£25 – Under-21s
£15 – Under-18s

Town have received an allocation of 1,964.

A brief history of Fulham FC: Formed in 1879, they didn't become members of the Football League until 1907, by which time they had already moved into their current home ground, Craven Cottage. The stadium, situated next to the River Thames, became their home in 1896 and the actual Craven Cottage has a history going back over 300 years when it used to be a royal hunting lodge.
Those early FL days were spent mainly in the 2nd division, but they became original members of Division 3 South when the FL was expanded in 1928. They won their first title in 1932, winning Div 3S, with the momentum of a winning team almost taking them straight up again, only to finish 3rd in the days when only two teams were promoted.
They had to wait until 1949 for their First Division debut after winning the Division 2 title. And it wasn't a long stay, only three seasons before relegation. Back up again in 1959, staying a bit longer before being demoted again in 1968. Then they became a yoyo team between the bottom three divisions, although in the 1970s they did become something of a glamour club, attracting star names to the Cottage such as George Best, Rodney Marsh, Bobby Moore and Alan Mullery. With Moore and Mullery, they reached the FA Cup Final of 1975, where they lost 2-0 to West Ham.
In the 90s, Fulham dropped to their lowest position at the foot of the 4th tier. This was when the club was bought out by businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed. He put Ray Wilkins in charge of team affairs, with Kevin Keegan alongside him. Wilkins left soon after, leaving Keegan in charge and he led the team to promotion, before being tempted away to manage England. Paul Bracewell and then Jean Tigana took over and in the blink of an eye, Fulham had been promoted from the depths of the 4th division to the Premier League, finishing the 2001-02 season in 13th position.
They became an established Premier League team until they were relegated in 2014, by which time al-Fayed had left the club and in 2010 they had had a dabble with Europe, reaching the final of the Europa League, losing to Atletico Madrid 2-1 after extra time.
In 2017/18, after being out of the picture for most of the season, they qualified for the Play Offs and won promotion back to the Premier League. They beat Derby County 2-1 on aggregate in the semis, after a 0-1 defeat at Pride Park they won 2-0 at the Cottage with goals from Ryan Sessegnon and Denis Odoi. Then at Wembley they beat Aston Villa 1-0 with a first half goal from Tom Cairney. But of course, they came straight back down again.

Head to Head



Following their victory up at our place, Fulham now lead the head to head with 27 wins to Town's 26 with 16 draws.

The first meeting of the two clubs was back in our first Football League season when we lost at their place on Boxing Day 1910.

We beat Fulham 3-0 at Leeds Road in the FA Cup in 1972 en route to what to still our last venture as far as the quarter finals. Goals that day were from Les Chapman and a couple from Jimmy Lawson.

We did famously get pumped by them twice in our promotion to the Premier season. Walloped 0-5 down at the Cottage, we also got beat 1-4 back at ours. We had however already qualified for the Play Offs at that stage and were really just easing off the gas, so to speak.

Last season, we registered our first league win of the campaign against the Cottagers. It was a 1-0 win when Christopher Schindler scored a header, only for it to eventually being given as a Timothy Fosu-Mensah own goal. The match down at Craven Cottage took place over the Christmas/New Year period, now known as Twixtmas, and was a disaster for the Terriers. It was part of our terrible December run of defeats, with the winner coming in the 90th minute from Aleksandar Mitrovic. And what was more galling was that it was on the breakaway after we looked like scoring up the other end. And all this came after Aboubakar Kamara had had his penalty saved by Jonas Lossl.

But let's not dwell on that, just concentrate on the fact that we beat them at home. That was the first win in 12 matches against this bogey team, going all the way back to 1992/93 when a Iwan Roberts goal gave us a 1-0 win at Craven Cottage.

And so to this season. It was another disappointing early season defeat in front of the Sky Sports cameras, which lead to the sacking of Jan Siewert less than an hour after the full time whistle. Juninho Bacuna cocked up a clearance in the 51st minute, which that boy Mitrovic nodded in at the far post. Karlan Grant equalised soon after, the ball just crossing the line and being given by the goal line technology. But a beauty of a goal from Ivan Cavaleiro snatched it for Fulham in the 80th minute.

So what's happening down at the Cottage? Managed nowadays by Scott Parker, the former actor famous for playing the chauffeur to Lady Penelope in Thunderbirds.
He played the majority of his footballing career in the Premier League for Charlton, Chelsea, Newcastle, West Ham, Spurs and finally Fulham.
He was player/coach when he signed for the then manager Slaviša Jokanović and then Claudio Ranieri, but took over as caretaker when Ranieri got the sack. And despite taking them to relegation, he was given the job full time at the end of the season.

Scotty Parker

So who have they got in their squad? Well they still have that Aleksandar Mitrovic who seems to score against us all the time. They also have another lad who's been a pain in our backside on many occasions, on loan from Brighton, Anthony Knockaert. Another loanee was Bobby Decordova-Reid, who was on loan from Cardiff, but has now made the move permanent. And another one is Ivan Cavaleiro, who scored the winner at the JSS, was on loan from Wolves but has also now signed permanantly. They've also got Harry Arter on loan from Bournemouth and Harrison Reed who's on loan from Southampton.
The captain, Scotsman Tom Cairney, who has played 150 times for the club and scored the goal to promote them at Wembley. Another captain in the team is the Norway international side's skipper, Stefan Johansen.
The goalie is Marcus Betinelli, son of the goalkeeping coach, although lately he has been on the bench meaning Slovakian Marek Rodák, who has spent the last couple of seasons on loan at Rotherham, has been between the sticks.
Another international in the team is Tim Ream, a centre back who has 35 caps for the USA. His centre back partner is Alfie Mawson, ex Swansea and Barnsley.


Club Connections:

Malcolm McDonald: was born in Fulham in 1950 and after a career as a superstar centre forward for Newcastle, Arsenal and England returned to his birthplace to manage the local football team in 1980. He won promotion to the 2nd division with them and almost took them up to the first division. After being seen as certainties to go up for most of the season, a slump at the end saw them fall at the final hurdle, controversially losing at Derby when the match was cut short following a pitch invasion. McDonald tried in vain to get the match replayed and he was replaced by Ray Harford as manager during the following season.
His time at Town was one of the worst periods in the club's history. He was here for less than a season, but in that time we lost 10-1 at Man City and were relegated having conceded 100 league goals in the season and finished 19 points adrift of safety. It was later revealed that he was an alcoholic, which was brought on by the pain suffered by the knee injury which had earlier caused him to cut short his playing career. He is widely regarded as the worst Town manager of all time.



Dale Tempest: played for Fulham during the McDonald era of the early 80s scoring 6 goals in 34 matches. He was signed for Town by Mick Buxton in 1984 and went on to score 27 goals in 65 matches for us, being the leading scorer in 84/85.
After us, he went to Gillingham and Colchester before disappearing out to the far east. He moved to Hong Kong in 1989 and became something of a superstar out there, playing for South China and becoming the leading league scorer for 5 seasons in a row. He was granted Hong Kong citizenship and even represented the country at international level.
Nowadays he is back in England and works for Sky Bet and also has a regular column in the Unexamined.



Lee Clark: in contrast to McDonald, he was the best Town manager of all time. Well, in his own mind anyway.
Appointed in 2008 as the first manager appointed by new chairman Dean Hoyle following the sacking of Stan Ternent, he got us to a reasonable 9th. His first full season saw him win three Manager of the Month awards and the team reached the Play Offs, eventually losing to Millwall.
It was Play Offs again the season after, with a memorable semi final victory over Bournemouth, followed by a less than memorable defeat at Old Trafford against Peterborough.
That defeat didn't count as a regular league match though and in the next season our run of unbeaten league matches was extended to an amazing 43, a Football League record, which some fans think was irrelevant due to the Peterborough defeat and the fact that it didn't actually lead to promotion. But nonetheless it's still an FL record whether the cynics like it or not. One of those cynics would appear to have been Mr Hoyle though and Clark was sacked and replaced by Simon Grayson not long after.
In his playing career he was one of the few players to have played for both Newcastle and Sunderland. His Sunderland career came to an abrupt end though. While on a night out with friends in London, he stopped to pose for photos with a group of Newcastle supporters, who put a t-shirt on him bearing the phrase "Mackem Bastards". He claimed he knew nothing about what was on the shirt, but it ended up with him being transferred to Fulham.
Unfortunately for us, his time at the Cottage coincided with the meltdown of the Steve Bruce era at Town and his man of the match performance in our end of season 0-3 defeat down there in May 2000 saw us miss out on the Play Offs after being in the top 6 since October. The following season, Town got relegated and Clark played a major role in Fulham's promotion to the Premier League.



Terence Kongolo: was a crowd favourite at Huddersfield Town until he spat his dummy out and is now loathed as much as he was liked. You'll never get past Kongolo, the song said, but quite often the opposition made this a big fat lie, most notably West Brom, Preston and Bristol City, which lead to Danny Cowley quite rightly, dropping him from the side.
He was born 25 years ago in Switzerland to Congolese parents, but brought up in the Netherlands, which he chose to represent on the international stage, firstly at under 15 level and making it eventually all the way to the full national side.
It was with Feyenoord that he started his playing career, making his debut as an 18 year old in 2012, ten years after he first signed on for their academy. He played over a hundred games for them in the Dutch Eredivisie and the Europa League, playing in a victory over Man Utd in 2016, before leaving to join AS Monaco in the summer of 2017. That didn't go well and after only playing six times for the French club, he was sent out on loan to Premier League club Huddersfield Town in the January 2018 transfer window.
He made his debut for us in the FA Cup game at Bolton and his league career got off with defeats to West Ham, Liverpool and Man Utd before he was part of the team that hammered AFC Bournemouth 4-1 at the JSS. He was of course part of the incredible defensive displays that secured our Premier League status with draws against Man City and Chelsea. He played 32 times in the relegation season and scored his only goal for us down at Bournemouth. And then this season, he looked more and more uninterested, his form was diabolical and so on the 16th of January he was shipped out to Fulham for the rest of the season.




'ow to get theere an' wheere to sup: The post code for sat nav is SW6 6HH, though that'll only be any good to you if you're the team bus driver, can't see there being anywhere to park at the ground. If going by car there is street parking, but it's restricted to an hour, so unless you leave at half time, that's no good. Best bet would be to park up elsewhere and cop the tube to Putney Bridge.

Pubs named on the Football Ground Guide are the Eight Bells, the Temperence, the King's Arms, the King's Head, the Crabtree, the Railway, the Boathouse and a Wetherspoons called the Rocket. Plenty of choice there.

However, the club have today announced that the Southern Terriers have organised a Q&A with chairman Phil Hodgkinson at the Half Moon pub in Putney, if you're interested. The address of the pub is 93 Lower Richmond Rd, Putney, London SW15 1EU and according to Google Maps, it's a 22 minute walk to Craven Cottage.

Recent form: Town are 19th in the Championship with 32 points and Fulham are 4th with 49 points.

Last 6 results:

Hull 1-2 Town
Town 0-0 Brentford
Barnsley 2-1 Town
Southampton 2-0 Town (FA Cup)
Town 2-5 Stoke
Town 2-1 Blackburn

Man City 4-0 Fulham (FA Cup)
Charlton 0-0 Fulham
Fulham 1-0 Boro
Hull 0-1 Fulham
Fulham 2-1 Villa (FA Cup)
Fulham 1-2 Reading


Fulham in popular culture: Not a great deal to choose from. They have some celebrity fans like the Pointless Richard Osman and ex Radio 2 presenter David Hamilton (who was for a time the matchday announcer). But the best example of a Fulham fan comes from the 1970s BBC sitcom Citizen Smith, written by another Fulham fan John Sullivan (who also wrote Only Fools and Horses). The lead character, Wolfie Smith, a Marxist urban guerrilla and leader of the Tooting Popular Front, was a Fulham fan (mentioned countless times throughout the series) and was always seen wearing a black and white Fulham scarf.