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Preview Percy was even less impressed than usual with this year’s visit to Anfield. Perhaps it was the home crowd telling him to ssh when he broke the funereal silence by sneezing. Here’s his look at Wednesday night’s visit to Fulham which, contains a valuable insight into the state of the Portuguese Film Industry. Beat that Football Focus...

Next up we return to civilization on Wednesday night where we will face Fulham at Craven Cottage. Kick-off is at 8pm, so be prepared for bit of a late one. TV is being covered by Discovery+ and by TNT via the red button, but for God’s sake don’t tell Donald Trump that.




So Fulham, then. Bit of a mixed bag so far this season as evidenced by their last six which has seen them win three and lose three. They finished off January with a 2-1 home win over Brighton, before losing three on the trot at Man Utd (3-2), at home to Everton (2-1) and away at Man City (3-0).

They have returned to winning ways of late with a favourable fixture list giving them a post-honeymoon Sunderland away fixture which they won 3-1, and of course Tottenham at home last weekend, where they prevailed 2-1 in a match that, had they had their shooting boots on, would have been a lot more comfortable than the score suggests.

Incidentally, whilst the league’s laughing-stock are in our crosshairs for a moment, remember when the Tottenham press department kept spouting all sorts of nonsense about meaningless non-existent “records” about what they or their players had done “in a calendar year”. Do you think the person responsible for that output has gone on annual leave for a bit? Probably until the end of 2026, I expect.

Anyhow, all those results at Fulham have left them in ninth place. Well away from the trouble areas below them but probably five or six shy of any meaningful assault on Europe.

Daisy informs me that, as seems to have been the trend this winter, they were not overactive in the transfer market this winter. They did sign Norwegian international Oscar Bobb from Man City for £27m. Bobb has an “interesting” history. As a kid he was on the books of Lyn who took their Under 11 squad to the Algarve for a tournament where he caught the eye of Porto’s scouts, who promptly started to enter into talks with the kid’s Mum.

Now there are rules on this sort of thing, one of which is that you can’t move anyone that young from one country to another unless their parents are moving for non-football reasons. FIFA took time out from counting the contents of the latest batch of brown envelopes to arrive in Zurich to look into Bobb’s proposed transfer and concluded that the excuse that Bobb’s mum had relocated to Portugal “to further her acting career” was even less convincing than whatever excuse they were working on to explain the contents of the brown envelopes.

To be fair they probably had a point – quite apart from the lack of ripples in the cinematic universe caused by Portuguese film industry, try as she might Daisy couldn’t find too much in the Oscar records relating to nominations for Norway’s answer to Merril Streep.




And with that, we shall move on to the Wild & Wacky World Of Association Football. Which this week focuses on matters West Ham for once. And the club’s accounts were published on the very deadline for publication, which, handily, for some, meant their appearing late in the day on a Friday. A pretty picture they did not make.

The headline loss figure was £104m, a figure which prompted some to dig out the quote that the “successful businesswoman” came out with when the current ownership took over, namely that they would “hang in the Tower of London” before the club would be in similar financial straits. Note the use of the word “before” there.

I’ve looked at all the papers – even the ones with pictures in that Tottenham supporters read – and can find no record of public executions in the Tower since a German spy was shot in 1941. Maybe there’s some sort of court injunction prohibiting the papers from publishing the details.

The figures – which the club have stated will require player sales to cover – have come 10 years after what the Baroness still insists was “the most successful Stadium move in history”. I don’t know about you but I’m not sure that the club can stand much more “success” of this type. Maybe it’s time that the owners left to work their “magic” on some other club. Tottenham would be funny.

The current financial situation is just another of the “successes” that has prompted the ongoing protests, which faced a brick wall of hypocrisy up at Anfield. Whether it was the result of a request from our owners or simply as a show of solidarity with fellow owners in the club’s ongoing battle against its own supporters is almost irrelevant. The fact that Liverpool saw fit to tell its stewards to confiscate the red cards, t-shirts & sweatshirts from supporters was a new low, even for them.

The explanations given by the stewards were laughable. I witnessed a supply of the red cards being confiscated by one female steward on the grounds of “safety”. When asked exactly how a small piece of card could be a “safety issue”, it was clear that her briefing had consisted of the words “just tell them it’s safety or something”. Though to be fair if you really tried, you could probably get a really nasty paper cut. I expect.

Others were told that “political material” was banned from the stadium, though they didn’t seem to have an issue with Palestinian flags. On another matter, whilst the concept of having “You’ll Never Walk Alone” signed for those with hearing difficulties may well be laudable, the feeling was dissipated slightly by being told the signing was sponsored by Carlsberg. I recall this site published an April Fool’s joke about 'Bubbles' being sponsored by Nestle to promote Aero chocolate one year which came within gnat’s hair of being published as fact by a gullible tabloid journalist. It seems we were ahead of our time.




On the pitch, we were treated to the usual embarrassing refereeing as Robinson set his stall out early doors by failing to award a clear corner. The full range of little assists were in play, the denial of advantage, which seems to be PGMOL’s thing of the month, seemed to be in particular vogue. Not that it was required really, on the rare occasion that Robinson did award us a free-kick the restart was delayed by kicking the ball away or, more often, by a player feigning injury.

To say they have always been fond of the so-called “dark arts” (or to give the watered-down phrase its true meaning, “cheating”) is a bit like saying FIFA employees have displayed a fondness for brown envelopes. However, these days it’s pretty much all they have. Win a corner or a free-kick and rely on the officials turning a blind eye to anything they can get away with in the box. Which at Anfield is pretty much a gimmee. Which makes Slot’s complaints about the modern game being “a chore to watch” particularly amusing. Perhaps you should try playing football then Arnie.

The refereeing impartiality can be gauged by just how long they spent in examining our perfectly fine first goal on VAR in a desperate attempt to disallow it. The other giveaway was the moment when Robinson put the whistle to his lips when Soucek had his legs taken from under him cuing up a shot then took the whistle away when he realised where he was. We played ok apart from our naivete at corners – oh and Wan-Bissaka’s appalling defending for one of the goals - but to have any chance up there you need honesty from the match officials.

The injury list is as you were. Pab and Fab are out, whilst Potts is sitting out his ban. Which brings us neatly on to the question of this week’s prediction.

Well we will be boosted by the fact that Fulham are more of a footballing side than last week’s opponents, though we will definitely need to improve on corners. We should take heart from the fact that there were decent spells at the weekend where we dominated and, yet again there is the prize of getting out of the bottom three for a a while – whilst the result on Saturday didn’t help any, other results meant that it wasn’t, in itself harmful.

Whilst Fulham will also been happy with having beaten Tottenham the fact remains that, well, it was Tottenham. In all honesty we are a better side than Tottenham and if we can keep the improved form going this one is winnable. So with that in mind I will be off to Winstone The Turf Accountants with my £2.50 of an origin that I shan’t disclose carried in a brown envelope, the whole lot to be wagered on an away win. Let us go for 2-1 to us shall we?

Enjoy the game!




When last we met at Craven Cottage: Drew 1-1 (Premier League September 2024)

Jiminez opened the scoring in the first half though there was a strong hint of offside in the build-up which survived what must have been a very cursory VAR check. We nicked a point in the 5th minute of stoppage time when a clever quick throw of the Prague variety found Bowen and sub Ings buried the cross.

Referee: Matthew Donohue

A new one on me – a member of the so-called Select Group 2 which means that PGMOL don’t think he’s up to the top group just yet. Frankly the top group are so bad that hopefully this chap is an improvement.

Danger Man: Harry Wilson

Started out his career at Liverpool where he failed to make a league appearance, presumably because he played too much football. In a decent run of goalscoring form though he is a slight doubt for this one having picked up an ank;e knock at the weekend.

Percy and Daisy’s Amazing Fulham Fact Of The Week Type Thing

Back in the day when the fraud Mohamed Fayed owned the club the phony pharaoh’s fixation with Michael Jackson saw Fulham’s club shop stock all sorts of Jacko-related tat, including a key ring that came in packaging carrying the helpful warning “not safe for children”.

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