The Centre Circle

In the weeks that Portsmouth have gone into financial meltdown, one similar sized club in terms of support of potential resources has been taking on the football giant that is Juventus. That Fulham fans can enjoy such glamorous opponents is surely down to one man, Roy Hodgson.

What a shrewd appointment it was when in December 2007, Fulham appointed him as manager. I bet more Fulham fans were initially disappointed than pleased, but it has turned out to be a masterstroke. What people tend to forget is that Roy once managed Inter Milan for 2 years, nearly pushed Finland to Euro 2008 (as well as England did), took Switzerland to the World Cup and has a network of contacts around Europe as good as anyone. Plus he can spot a player. He has assembled a selection of players discarded by other larger clubs (Damian Duff, Danny Murphy, Bobby Zamora) and cherry-picked the odd gem from the smaller European nations (Brede Hangeland, Erik Nevland) and formed a side that plays neat attractive football. Fulham are chugging along nicely in the middle of the premiership, still in the FA and UEFA cups and are always liable to turn over one of the big boys on their day as last Thursday proved. I don’t think they get half the credit they deserve, and that credit is entirely down to the quiet genius that is Roy Hodgson.