Posts Tagged ‘Carlos Salcido’

Salcido Finds His Way Out: On Loan to Tigres

Posted: August 15, 2011 by Kyle Bonn in Transfer
Tags: , ,
0

Carlos Salcido has been given permission to fly to Mexico and finalize the deal with Tigres on a season-long loan.  The loan also has the option to buy.  This was a long time coming for Salcido, as he has wanted out of Europe for a while.  His family’s house was robbed a while back, and ever since then he’s let homesickness get the best of him.  That option to buy will most likely be exercised, and you can probably say your farewells to Salcido.

Jol has been preparing for this for a while, but with a defender down, he is thought to be interested in Aston Villa’s Luke Young.  AVFC is thought to be completing a deal for Alan Hutton from Spurs, and it would allow Alex McLeish to open negotiations for both Young and Cuellar.

The biggest question mark in the defense now is Chris Baird, which is unfortunate since many thought he should have been Fulham’s Player of the Year last season.  Baird did not start and did not appear in the season opener against Aston Villa, and Martin Jol is thought to be more in tune with starting Senderos in the middle and moving Hughes to the right.  However, if Jol were to get Young, it would increase the questionable future of Baird.

Fulham 3-0 Bolton: Dempsey To The Rescue

Posted: April 27, 2011 by Kyle Bonn in Postgame
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

Clint Dempsey celebrates after scoring one of his two goals (courtesy ESPNSoccernet)

If you’re sitting there, and you can honestly tell me when the lineups were announced for this match and you DIDN’T put your head in your hands and go “here we %*$*&# go again” you’re not a real fan.  Because I’m pretty sure that’s what every single Fulham fan did.  But…instead of a page-long Mark Hughes anger rant, thanks to Clint Dempsey and everyone else on the pitch I’m sitting here talking about a blowing out of the 8th place team, and how we won’t be relegated.

I’ll take it.

Also, I’d like to point out that by the transitive property, Fulham are now better than Arsenal.  Bolton beat Arsenal 2-1, we annihilated Bolton. Boom baby.

Finally, before we get into it, a big congratulations to Clint Dempsey for becoming Fulham’s new Premier League all-time leading goalscorer with 33 career league goals.

The good (can I just put “everything?”):

-Clint Dempsey: Finally, someone can finish! There’s an unteachable talent for being in the right place at the right time, and he has it.  Both his goals he was in the right place at the right time to have a great chance, and he took advantage of both.  Also, he was awful against Wolves.  Credit to him for turning that completely around.

-The defense: I wrote in my preview post that Fulham would win if they played lockdown defense.  Well, they did just that.  Every single member of the defense ball-hawked so well today, and it paid off.  They made Bolton rush their shots, and their finishing was a disaster because of it.  Hughes and Hangeland were INCREDIBLE in the middle, and Hangeland even picked up a set-piece goal.  Baird and Salcido were both excellent in the attacking half as well.  Salcido has had 2 shots whiz just over the goal from exactly the same spot on the left side in 2 matches  now. One day, he’s going to put that top shelf and it’s going to be a goal to remember. Extremely well played match by the whole defense, particularly the center halves. Schwarzer also played on point.

-Set-piece/approach play: The guys I’m including in this section are Chris Baird, Moussa Dembele, Danny Murphy, and Steve Sidwell.  All those guys had a great game in the approach play, and all 3 goals were scored off set-pieces.  Part of that was Bolton’s inability to clear or to man up, but the approach play was methodical, accurate, and skillful.  That’s exactly how Fulham plays.

The bad:

-Mark Hughes: STOP BENCHING ZAMORA.  Gudjohnsen has done nothing and shouldn’t be on the pitch, and he’s too old to be effective for 90 or even 70.  Zamora should.  Get him in the starting lineup NOW. Dempsey let you off the hook this time.  Otherwise you’d have a LOT of angry Fulham fans calling for your head right now.

Not much else bad to be honest.  Gudjohnsen was still not good but at least he was lively in the first half.

Man of the Match: Dempsey, no doubt.

One more note, Fulham have never lost a match with referee Anthony Taylor.

Fulham are now bumped up to 9th place in the table with 42 points. With 4 matches remaining, that should be plenty to stay up.  Above them are Bolton with 46, Everton with 47, and Liverpool with 52.  Think Fulham can catch Liverpool? Going to be tough with Sunderland, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Arsenal remaining. Going to have to beat Liverpool for sure to catch them, but at least that one’s at the Cottage.

Sunderland coming up.  Anything from Mark Hughes I will throw on Twitter and put in a post.  Same as any news.  Preview for Saturday will most likely come tomorrow as Friday is basically get drunk day here at Syracuse University, so I will most likely be out of commission. Can you blame me? COYW!

Wolves 1-1 Fulham: The Glass Is Half Empty

Posted: April 23, 2011 by Kyle Bonn in Postgame
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
2

Andy Johnson saves a point from Wolves, but Fulham can't grab the win

Fulham fans can come out of this match feeling 2 different ways.  You can either feel this is a point gained, or 2 points lost. I’m not even going to beat around the bush, I’m going to get right to the meat and potatoes of how this match left me feeling: Mark Hughes lost 2 points for Fulham.  Bottom line, end of story.  And the worst part is, he lost the match before it even began.  Mark Hughes came up with the brilliant idea of starting Eidur Gudjohnsen and Simon Davies instead of Bobby Zamora, Andy Johnson, or Gael Kakuta.  His thinking was clearly to save the starters for the upcoming bouts with Bolton and Sunderland Wednesday and Saturday.  We’ll see how the decision affects those matches, but right now, it cost Fulham 2 points.

Simon Davies actually played pretty well, but he ran out of steam and his crosses became more and more erratic as the match went on.  Gudjohnsen was a non-factor, and his chance to prove his worth to the club went by the wayside.

For the record, did I not say that nobody ever wants to go up against a team fighting for their lives? (I did, incase you didn’t realize that was rhetorical) Wolves played like they were fighting for their lives, and although some of their challenges were questionable, I don’t fault them, as they played valiantly and really had the energy and spirit Fulham was sometimes lacking.  I might as well just get into it.

The good:

Andy Johnson – He scored so quickly after coming into the match that my phone received the ESPN text alert of the goal before it got the text regarding the substitution.  It wasn’t a perfect strike but Hennessey wasn’t really ready for it since it didn’t exactly come into the box on a perfect cross or clear scoring opportunity, so he was flat-footed and couldn’t get over to make the save.  It was a shot in the arm for Fulham, one that I honestly didn’t expect to come.

Gael Kakuta – After coming on with Zamora and getting into a groove, he put in some seriously spirited shots.  I believe if given a start, he would have found the back of the net.  He really got comfortable with the match and started to create chances as well as attempt to finish them.

The defense – I will give Aaron Hughes a pass on the goal. Looking back on it, it wasn’t a horrible job, he just didn’t jump high enough to challenge Fletcher for the header and got beat.  It wasn’t like anyone really messed up their marking or anything.  I predicted we’d allow a goal anyways, and holding Wolves to 1 is just fine defensively in my opinion, it’s the offense that let the 2 points slip away.  The rest of the match was well played by the back 4.  In a very physical match, their challenges were good and accurate, unlike many of the midfielders’ challenges, and after the goal (especially in the 2nd half), they ended almost every Wolves buildup before it could gain any kind of headway.

Carlos Salcido – The defenseman had a few issues in defense, but his early strike left me incredibly surprised, and he had a few absolutely beautiful feeds of Dempsey and Dembele who were both off-target all day.  I was happy with his play.

Despite the large number of free kicks given, I would have put referee Michael Oliver in here if it weren’t for the yellow card on Brede Hangeland for a perfectly fine challenge that actually won the ball (it also sent Mark Hughes to the stands for kicking a water bottle.  It seems the former Manchester City star has lost a bit of his accuracy, taking three hacks before connecting his foot with the bottle.  Was kind of a funny display. Nice to see him getting emotionally invested though, I like when managers have a fire about them such as that).

The bad:

Mark Hughes – I put the blame on him.  With 5 matches to go, it’s not about resting your starters, no matter what the next week’s schedule looks like.  It’s about sucking it up, gritting it out, and grabbing as many points as you can.  Hughes didn’t realize this, and he paid the price.  Starting Eidur Gudjohnson and benching Zamora was an absolute atrocity of a mistake, even if Bobby apparently picked up a slight knock in training. I know I’m beating a dead horse, but I was pretty upset about this right from the getgo.

Eidur Gudjohnsen - Failed to have an impact on the game, and was generally useless on the pitch.  I realize he’s at this point no better than a backup, but I know he’s better than how he played.  The attack as a whole is to blame for the lack of goal scoring, but at least Dembele and Dempsey had chances they came close on. EidGud was practically invisible. I can’t even remember any memorable touches he had.

Clint Dempsey – I only put him here because he had a few blantly obvious chances he misfired on.  His accuracy was off, and it led to some pretty poor finishing from the normally dead-on-balls accurate midfielder (name the movie reference!).

Man of the Match:

This is a tough one, as many people played a part for both sides but no one really came out as a hero.  I would say if I had to pick (and I do), I would go with Wolves captain Karl Henry, who played pretty darn good, physical defense, and kept his team together and although they didn’t win, they grabbed a pretty big point.

Going forward, this club has to go for it all, or they’re not going to get anywhere.  Mark Hughes has to take smart risks, not stupid ones, and he has to play aggressively.  He did neither of those today, and it cost the club.  I realize I may be overly negative, but this is a bad draw.   Let’s hope it doesn’t hurt the club going forward.  If I had to pick, I still think Wolves will stay up, with West Ham, Blackpool, and Wigan going down.

Mark Hughes after the match:

“We’ve got to be pleased with taking something out of the game. From our point of view the worst-case scenario was to allow Wolves to  score first. That’s what happened and it made a for hard day for us. If  we’d have taken any one of the chances that we created early on I think we would  have comfortably won the game. That would have caused Wolves to come out and try  and get back on level terms and I think we would have very quickly picked them  off. But because they had something to fight for and protect it was more  difficult for us. But we kept going and thankfully we got something out of the  game. It’s a difficult fixture on paper and we had to be strong today and show  character to get back on level terms.”

Hughes is glass half full.  Me, not so much. What are you?

We have a nice quick turnaround and play Bolton on Wednesday.  Any thoughts from today? Are you feeling as negative as me after this match? Maybe Andy Johnson lifted your spirits and you’re happy with the result? Let’s hear em.  If I find any other bits of news from the match, or interesting quotes from Sparky I will pass them along to you either here or on my Twitter, @FulhamsFinest.

Summer Transfer Roundup: Fulham’s Finest Goes Shopping

Posted: April 17, 2011 by Kyle Bonn in Opinion, Transfer
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
6

Well, there’s nothing to write about, so I’m going to just write about stuff that I make up. Looking ahead to the summer (boy, with the weather 50 degrees and raining outside here in upstate New York, it’d be sure nice to look ahead to the summer), here’s what I’d love to see the team do, and what is looking likely at the moment.

I’m guessing MAF will allow for about £10 million of extra money to be alloted to transfers, in addition to anyone that’s sold. Seems like a reasonable number to me. First here’s who I think will be sold, and then we’ll tally the money and spend it to our liking. I love spending money!

Side note: as correctly pointed out by Fulham Kid, many of these players are out of contracts, and therefore would be free. But I decided to keep their “hypothetical value” to represent their cost because rating them on potential contract is too complicated.

Say goodbye to: (most of these are pretty obvious, lots of players who suck and don’t play, but think they’re good)

-Zoltan Gera: No explaination necessary.
To: Serie A
Price: Free
Hypothetical value: £3.5 million

-Kagisho Dikgacoi: He’s on loan and likes it better elsewhere.
To: Crystal Palace
Price: £1 million

Diomansy Kamara has made it clear he's going to go somewhere he can get first team time, whether with Leicester or somewhere else

-Diomansy Kamara: Same as Dikgacoi
To: Leicester City
Price: Free
Hypothetical value: £2 million

-Eddie Johnson: He’s barely played, and is apparently unhappy. Also on loan
To: Preston
Price: Free
Hypothetical value: £800K

-John Pantsil: Basically the same situation as Gera. Guy did himself in with own goals. Although he could be saved by the idea that he’d get another shot with Salcido wanting to leave. He’s also said in the past he’s willing to change positions to finish his career at CC. He’s not a lock to leave like the others are, but he’s about 95%.
To: West Brom
Price: Free
Hypothetical value: £3.5 million

-Carlos Salcido: He’s playing well and earned a spot back in the starting XI. However, he’s homesick and has made it public he wants to go back to Mexico.
To: Mexico
Price: £3 million

I don’t see any more sales than that. Lots of changes to the backups, but that’s pretty usual. As much as I wish they would sell Andy Johnson (and there have in fact been rumors about that), I just don’t see Hughes parting ways with Johnson. I also personally wish Fulham would go shop Schwarzer to get David Stockdale in at first team goal, but I don’t believe that will happen either, especially all the talk with Schwartzer wanting to extend his stay at Craven Cottage.

Now for the fun part! Here’s how I would like Hughes to use the £23 million we now have. That’s a lot of money, so I’m going to enjoy this :) do I think they’ll end up using all of the £23 million if they get that much? No. But I like it so here we go. Also, let it be known I’m much more into quality over quantity. Especially since there are a few holes but otherwise this team’s base is very solid.

Already secured:

-Dan Burn
-Eidur Gudjohnson (loan -> permenant)
-Alex Manninger

Kyle’s £23 million Wish List:

Johan Elmander will be on the market for sure this summer

-Johan Elmander: I’ve already posted how I want him to come to CC. He’s not signing a new contract at Bolton, and although it’d be somewhat of a bidding war with clubs like Liverpool, manager Kyle is winning this one. It’s taking a big chunk of the money out, but he would be great next to Zamora.
Price: Free
Hypothetical value: £8.5 million

-Artjoms Rudnevs: This one is more realistic, so I’ll go for it. He’s been rumored to be in at Fulham in the summer, and he’s young and relatively inexpensive. I like the move.
Price: £2.5 million

-Gary Cahill OR Steven Taylor: It is of my belief that, with a bunch of defenders leaving, signing one of these would give Fulham an absolute brick wall in defense. They are both center backs, but Hughes has the ability to play the side, plus he and Hangeland aren’t getting any younger. Both these 25 year olds would not only provide a solid defense, but they could be the future of the defense along with Briggs and Burn. Both players have proven their worth in the PL and Newcastle and Bolton could be looking to add a little cash. It would be a very smart signing in my opinion. Cahill is more expensive, so I believe Taylor is the better value, but both offer significant upside to the price. Someone I was very tempted to spend money on was Matthew Upson, the captain for West Ham. But these two youngsters’ age was the deciding factor for me.
Price: Cahill – £8.5 million Taylor – £5.5 million

Sebastian Larsson improved his stock at the Carling Cup, and could net Birmingham City a good fee if sold

-Sebastian Larsson: The Birmingham City and former Arsenal midfielder was spectacular in winning the Carling Cup. He’s been touted by many clubs and officials, and is an extremely good value. This buy would round out my spending to lock down the midfield, which has given Sparky so many injury problems this season. Depth at midfield is an absolute must, and this move would secure that. Also, Larsson is still 25 and very experienced, having played for Arsenal before Birmingham City. The only issue with this move is it would create almost a logjam at midfield, with 7 capable starters (Larsson plus Duff, Murphy, Sidwell, Dempsey, Etuhu, and yes, I’m including Dembele). I think it’s time Danny Murphy steps aside, as he’s not as consistent as he used to be, but as is the same with Mark Schwarzer, it’s tough to just throw aside club loyalty for youthful replacements.
Price: Free
Hypothetical value: £6 million

The lineup after the purchases:

Starting XI – Schwarzer/Stockdale, Hangeland, Taylor/Cahill, Hughes, Baird, Duff, Dempsey, Larsson, Sidwell, Elmander, Zamora
Bench – Dembele, Gudjohnson, Murphy, Etuhu, Kelly, Halliche, Schwarzer/Stockdale
Youth in the wings – Dalla Valle, Briggs, Burn, Rudnevs

I could see Briggs or Burn coming up very soon, as the defensive bench is very thin. Dalla Valle also will be up very soon, which could put a striker or two in a tough spot. I see Gudjohnson making way for him if someone had to hit the road.

That would be a pretty sweet team, no?

Give me your thoughts. Obviously all those players I mentioned Fulham buying are all who I would go out and get, not what will probably happen. It’s just kind of my transfer best-case scenario, if you will.