He may not be Vedder of Pearl Jam, the Champions League-winning Extra Time-scoring former Colchester United part-timer, nor our ex Chairman/Manager May… But hello anyway, Fulham reserve EJ!

By: Martyn | August 22nd, 2008

In a week that has seen two of our players end up on losing Welsh national teams - Parry with the full team, Blake with the U21’s - here’s hoping that they rejoin a squad still buoyed and surfing the momentum wave provided by the unbeaten start to the season. Watching City-wise, this week sees us in action 3 times and I am eagerly awaiting taking my place in the crowd for every single one of them!

First up in the triple bill is tomorrow’s Championship encounter with Norwich City at Ninian Park. The Canaries, who haven’t exactly made the greatest start to the season are blighted by the problems I and every other sucker noted would hamper them before the season began: No Strikers = Not Enough Goals. As a result, we’ll get a result. Although Wes Hoolahan looks like he could cause us one or two problems, the start our full-backs McNaughton and Kennedy have had to the season fills me with almighty confidence that they’ll keep this particular threat sealed in a Tupperware container at the bottom of the rucksack. Talking of things almighty, I doubt God himself would manage to get past McNaughton when the Scot is on his game!

Although the boys in yellow and green have a vast array of munition to put in the midfield cannons, I have faith that our central pairing can be more than a match for Fotheringham and Pattison. The pacy and tireless Parry and McNaughton have the ability to run an aging Dejan Stefanovic ragged at the back, and newbie Gyepes - set for a start, apparently - can look forward to ending the match without too many beads of sweat escaping his torso if all he has to deal with frontman threat-wise is Cureton and Lupoli. On paper at least, that duo looks about as frightening as Casper. I’ll plump for an unspectacular yet solid and pleasing 2-0 home win with all the usual suspects: Early goal, 70 minutes of dreary, ineffectual and impotent garbage, then finally putting them to the sword in the 85th minute. Doing the cheering-initiating honours will be Parry and Bothroyd.

Elsewhere in our division, one will toss one’s hat in a few rings…

Birmingham City 5 - 0 Barnsley
Blackpool 1 - 0 Sheffield United
Charlton Athletic 2 - 0 Reading
Coventry 0 - 0 Bristol City
Crystal Palace 3 - 2 Burnley
Derby County 4 - 1 Southampton
Ipswich 2 - 2 Wolverhampton Wanderers
Nottingham Forest 1 - 0 Watford
Plymouth Argyle 1 - 1 Swansea City
QPR 3 - 0 Doncaster Rovers
Sheffield Wednesday 1 - 2 Preston North End

Come Saturday evening, I’ll be busily rearranging the following words to form a coherent sentence - Face. Egg. On.

——————–

So then, its another deal on the cheap. The final piece of the 08/09 jigsaw (purchased at a car-boot sale) is Eddie Johnson on a year’s loan from Fulham. 6 appearances - Pardon me, 6 occasions of running about like a headless chicken - in the Premier League for Fulham, 0 goals, but trudge over the gangway to HMS Cardiff City, son. We don’t settle for second best round here, y’know. Going from sniffing around and bidding for the likes of Kris Boyd and Marlon King to snapping up someone who barely makes the reserve team for Fulham is well, it’s just the same, is it not?

Where exactly will Johnson feature in the striking pecking order then? Well, I’d say 5th choice. Which is just darn dandy business! Even more so when you consider that if he does well, the Cottagers can haul him back in January… yippee! The saying goes that if you pay peanuts, you’ll only get monkeys working for you. That’s clearly now evolved to if you pay big bucks, you get blind and mentally incongruous monkeys working for and in charge at your club.

With all the noise emanating from the club about buying big, I fail to see how we’ve stuck to our promises - especially when you consider the Parry and McCormack partnership (although undoubtedly effective) has a tendency to hover in the trequartista position rather than outright up-front - and brought in not just a proven goalscorer, but a proven STRIKER!! Welcome to the club and best of luck anyway Eddie. It isn’t your fault your new superiors are idiots, and if you net handfuls of goals we’ll quite happily make you our newest deity.

——————–

I’ve blogged previously on Dave Jones’s shall we say interesting manner of dealing with public relations tasks. Scanning Wales Online earlier, the world was presented with some fresh meat to throw on the Dave Jones Is Useless and Clueless At Giving Interviews BBQ. More or less, every single sentence in this particular offering has been uttered before. In some cases, I’m sure a robot that looks Dave Jones is brought out to face the hounds in the press with a tape-recorder of standard media-fare answers duct-taped inside the machine’s outer-layer ready to be delivered with the pressing of the ‘play’ button.

However, this particular interview provided us with one gem of a soundbite: “I’m not a person to sit still and wait for something to happen.” Is that so, Dai? Right then, perhaps the next time Joe Ledley or Stephen McPhail are having a stinker of a game the crowd will have to remind you of your own reasoning and personality justification by reciting that particular line. Hell, you won’t take them off otherwise in spite of your protesting that you’re a doer not a ditherer.