Fulham 2, Wolves 1: Bill Howell's big match verdict
MORE bookings than Bobby Davro and Kenny Lynch’s double-act in a summer season on Blackpool Pier.
More cards than Brucie Forsyth – Higher! Lower!
More cautions than a serial shop front piddler.
Mick McCarthy’s men are trotting merrily down a Yellow Brick Road.
They’re not the messiahs, they’re very naughty boys.
Daffodils, buttercups, budgerigars. The beer stain on an aged place mat. A song by Coldplay.
“Look at the stars, look how they shine for you and everything you do,” warble, warble.
Yellow is the colour. Football is the game, we’re all together and name taking is our aim.
So much yellow in their bloodstreams you’d think they’d got jaundice.
Seven more here to add to the seven noted by Stuart Attwell against Newcastle.
Ouch! Count those £25,000 Football Association fines.
And here, in much the same way as Attwell’s incompetent management of the infamous Karl Henry versus Joey Barton scrap led to a merry free-for-all with cards dished out like confetti, Stoke’s finest whistle-blower Phil Dowd appeared to cave in to a vocal and vociferous home following.
Alan Hansen, Alan Shearer and Gary Lineker have a lot to answer for. In highlighting seven tackles made by Wolves on Barton on Match of the Day they had implied Wanderers were, well, rather dirty.
So when Jody Craddock got away with a slide-tackle in the box that perhaps clipped Simon Davies, when Bobby Zamora broke his leg after a perfectly fine tackle by Henry, when Kevin Doyle got away with a shirt-tug on Brede Hangeland before chipping a perfect cross for Jelle Van Damme’s opening goal all hell broke loose in the stands.
Grown men used very grown up language indeed and very schoolboy-like actions.
An Alex Higgins look-alike, complete with black Fedora and huge green gloves, was enjoying a rather heated debate with a balding bloke in his 50s at the front of the Grade II-listed Johnny Haynes Stand.
In between all the ‘f’ words there was a lot of pointing and it became clear that the pair were intending to settle their dispute outside.
All this in leafy Fulham. Leafy, plush, posh, luxurious, rich, costly, deluxe, elegant, lavish, luscious, lush, luxury, opulent, palatial, ritzy, silken, sumptuous Fulham by the Thames.
The sixth Baron Craven, who owned a cottage on what is now the centre circle and was surrounded by royal hunting grounds 200-odd years ago would not have been amused.
Dowd booked Michael Mancienne for what appeared a minor indiscretion indeed. Daring to look Danny Murphy between the eyes or some such misdemeanour.
