By Ollie Irish

New Liverpool boss Roy Hodgson is a good bloke, clearly, but that doesn't mean Uncle Woy wouldn't dare poach a player or two from his former club, Fulham. That's just the way it works managers want to work with players they rate and like.

I don't think Hodgson will pillage the Cottage, but I predict he will sign at least one Fulham star before the beginning of the new Premier League season.

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Nicola T (left) and Melissa Johnson promote the new Premier League football highlight service from Yahoo!

For selling football to the masses, you can always rely on the appeal of glamour girls in cheap and skimpy uniforms especially if one of the girls (Nicola T, Bobby Zamora's ex, and now with Simon Walton) is a football WAG.

Clint Dempsey is a really good footballer. He contributes goals from midfield, defends well, works hard, and is a threat from set pieces. He can also deliver the unexpected, although he attempts the unexpected so often that eventually the unexpected is only unexpected in its success. From his position on the left he works well with Paul Konchesky, Zoltan Gera and Bobby Zamora, and is a real asset to the team.

By Ollie Irish

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Clint Dempsey, Fulham's best player this season, suffered cruciate knee damage at Blackburn on Sunday and may struggle not only to return for the Cottagers this season but also to be fit in time for the World Cup in South Africa.

European football occasionally throws up the odd freak result, but sometimes you witness a display of football brilliance so sharp it takes your breath away. Tonight, Fulham dazzled and displayed such panache against the tottering giants of Italian football, Juventus, that you had to check that things had really happened.

If Fulham is to pull off the improbable and reach the Europan League semifinals, the Cottagers will need to do so without Clint Dempsey.

The American midfielder/forward will miss Fulham's quarterfinal second leg vs. Wolfsburg on Thursday with a thigh injury. He suffered the injury during Fulham's recent win vs.

By Chris Wright

Here's the round-up...

Rumour No. 1: Despite only being in the job for less than a morning, newly-appointed Liverpool manager Roy Hodgson is already drawing up plans to spend the £15 million transfer budget he has been handed.

There are signs of a new Fulham emerging. Mark Hughes won't want to change too much too soon, but a few clever tweaks seem to have added something and today we were unfortunate not to beat a decent Bolton side.

The first half was quite even, Bolton perhaps shading it. David Stockdale, playing in place of the suspiciously injured Mark Schwarzer, had a bit to do and did most of it well: a superb full-stretch save from Martin Petrov was a highlight, not least because he caught the ball, which 'keepers don't tend to do these days.

Owen Hargreaves

With 67 days to go before the big kick-off in South Africa, recent developments have changed the look of England's squad with currently several positions still up for grabs due to injuries and form issues. Let's look at some of the questions Fabio Capello has to deal with before the plane leaves.

Squad Profiles are available for each of the twenty clubs currently playing in the Premier League. They are an overview of each club and specifically denote players to highly consider selecting for your side. Others have been ear-marked to watch out for as they may be new to the Premiership or returning from injury.

Eddie Johnson got himself a full thirty-five minutes this weekend in Fulham's 0-0 draw with Everton at Craven Cottage. Brought on for Zoltan Gera, Johnson's appearance was his third in the league and fourth overall this season.
Johnson, for Johnson, played relatively well. His first touch was spotty, but passable on most occasions.

At this stage of the season, I'm not too bothered how we score or how we get the points, just as long as we do. Obviously it would be easier on our hearts if we could grab two goals in the first ten minutes every week but that would be too good to be true.

Today we didn't have to settle for scrappy goals or scrape a win.

The 4-4-2 formation is the most popular formation in football. But why?
To start with, the 4-4-2 is the most balanced formation of all. A manager is provided with strong coverage in every area of the pitch - defensive coverage, offensive coverage, midfield coverage, width.

On Tuesday, Bob Bradley announced the 30-man preliminary United States mens' national team roster for the World Cup. Here it is:

GK: Howard, Guzan, Hahnemann
Def: Bocanegra, Onyewu, Cherundolo, Spector, DeMerit, Goodson, Pearce, Marshall, Bornstein
Mid: Donovan, Dempsey, Bradley, Holden, Kljestan, Rogers, Feilhaber, Torres, Bedoya, Beasley, Clark, Edu
For: Altidore, Buddle, Ching, Johnson, Findley, Gomez

First things first.

Bobby Zamora's first 45 minutes in an England shirt turned another routine international friendly into a full-on "c'mon!" session. At first England didn't seem to be playing through Zamora, whose role as a spearhead was undermined by the team's reluctance to feed him balls he could use.

Then Wayne Rooney went off and the whole thing changed.

There is absolutely no deadwood in the Fulham team and on Thursday evening they showed that they have completely shed their "soft" image as they outplayed and outthought the 27 time Italian league winners Juventus.

Some of the supporters must have been thinking that it was lights out time after the 2nd minute when David Trezequet slotted home in front of the Hammersmith End.

The game that summed up United's season came at Craven Cottage, with Edwin Van der Sar, Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic, Jonny Evans, Wes Brown, Gary Neville, John O'Shea and Rafael da Silva all out injured. Like the season before, United lost the game and this was something we were left to reflect upon in May when missing out on the title by just one point.

By Ollie Irish

In another life England goalkeeper Joe Hart would be a Scottish women's rugby international. I see him as a burly, red-cheeked forward, and there's every chance he'd be related to Colin Hendry Jo McHart, his sports-mad niece, perhaps?

I was staggered to read Ryan Shawcross's contribution to the discussion about dangerous tackling. In the week in which Bobby Zamora and Hatem ben Arfa both suffered very serious injuries caused by so-called ‘full blooded' tackles, Shawcross had this to say:

"The likes of Henry and de Jong, I'm sure, didn't go out to injure another player on purpose.

Ah, the magic of the FA Cup. This was perhaps more Debbie McGee than Harry Houdini, but not a bad game.

Fulham should have scored in the second minute when Bobby Zamora steered wide from a strangely straightforward position. Fulham did score soon afterwards when Zamora outmuscled his marker lesser men would have gone down here as the defender was quite explicit with his tugging and chipped over the advancing but down-too-early goalkeeper to make it 1-0.

Clint Dempsey scored Fulham's second goal in their 3-2 loss to Stoke City at the Britannia Stadium, playing the unlikely role of super sub. Dempsey came on in the 54th-minute for Bobby Zamora, who had to be subbed off with an injury. That ended Fulham manager Roy Hodgson's plans to rest Dempsey, needing help to turnaround Stokes' three first-half goals.

Read that scoreline again. And again. Fulham 4, Juventus 1. Wonderful. Unbelievable. Wonderful.

I can not imagine how this can be bettered. From whatever angle you look at this game it was astonishing. There we were, 4-1 down on aggregate, a goal down in the first minute, playing against an Italian side that, one would assume, would be able to defend a big lead without too much trouble.

It seems a bit unfair that speculation is already mounting as to who will be Fabio Capello's successor as England boss? Especially as the doughy-faced Italian hasn't had the chance to lead the Three Lions through a proper competition yet, and has a record so far most managers would kill for.

But the pressures of the England job and when I say pressures I mean the unwarranted press attention, the hyperbolic predicitions before each tournament, and the contradictory analysis of every little aspect of the job make it a less-than-envious role.

By Ollie Irish

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So, Bobby Zamora. He used to be shit, now he's not. Quite a transformation for the ex-Brighton and Spurs striker. Uncle Woy Hodgson seems to have got the best out of Row Z, but could Capello do the same?

Tomorrow, May 11th, is the deadline for teams to submite their 30 man preliminary World Cup squads to FIFA. The final 23 man squads (which are due June 1st) can only contain players from this 30 man squad. So if you're not in the 30, you're not in the 23.

Which makes tomorrow a big big day for the England team and for Fabio Capello.

When Fulham survived on the last day of the season in 2008, they didn't know what an adventure they would go on in the seasons to follow. Roy Hodgson had amazingly kept the Cottagers up despite them being bottom at Christmas; only West Brom had ever stayed after being in that position on the 25th of December.

Roy Hodgson's mission at Fulham went unfinished. His appointment as manager was Fulham onwer Mohammad Al-Fayed's step towards putting Fulham in the top four of modern English football lore, and Fulham nearly achieved it. Each season under Hodgson got better and better at Craven Cottage, with many players coming into his system and leaving more hardened to the English game.

photo credit: anothersaab

Liverpool's finances are not in the best of shape. The club's American owners purchased the club with the idea of developing a new stadium, increasing turnover and then selling the club on at a substantially larger price. As a consequence of the failure to develop a new stadium, plus the extra unexpected disappointment of not qualifying for the 2010/2011 Champions League campaign, the owners plans have truly fallen apart.

Early morning odds on a broken leg low only due to the bravery of Murphy and Wenger.

Blood and Thunder. Pride and Passion. Commitment. Reducer, let him know you are there early doors. He's not that kind of player.

These platitudes and their ilk, spouted by the supporters of the perpetrators of some of the nastiest and horrific injury causing tackles seen in recent years, have gone a long way towards the recent stream of mangled limbs that have littered this wonderful new Premiership season.

Roy Hodgson prepares himself for flood of offers!

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Roy Hodgson is bracing himself for several bids for in-form striker Bobby Zamora.

Clint Dempsey has been having a great year for Fulham. He has 6 goals on the season and his contributions have earned him a starting role for most the season as he has been a force for the Cottagers. However, today was not one of those days as the US National Team player started out on the bench. But it was evident to Roy Hodgson, after going down 3-0 to Stoke City that they needed Dempsey back in the line up.

According to John Percy at the London Evening Standard, Fulham boss Roy Hodgson will not go out and spend big money despite recent injuries to Bobby Zamora and Brede Hangeland. Hodgson said,

"Like most other clubs we're not looking to go into a situation where we splash a lot of money around.

Tevez is a stud, not a dud
That break seemed like it lasted forever. Boxing Day fixtures, the New Year, then a bit of FA Cup action, some snow mixed in between, and now we're back to the Premier League this weekend...
I. Tottenham @ Liverpool: One of these two teams most certainly will not make the Top 4.

Making Pennant and Mullins look like fools
Our Funny Feeling Friday selection this week is Fulham's Danny Murphy (6M). Murphy is only owned by 4% of fantasy footie managers, not nearly as popular as his teammates Duff (12% owned) or Dempsey (injured but still 9% owned) but he may shine this weekend with two home matches as Fulham's best midfield option.

Photo by ISIphotos.com

Oguchi Onyewu took to the practice field Thursday and trained for the first time since being sidelined with a ruptured patellar tendon in the U.S. men's national team's World Cup qualifier vs. Costa Rica last October.

Onyewu took part in 30 minutes of light training with the U.

He's British. He's quick. He's strong. And he's in the form of his career. Nope, I'm not talking about Wayne Rooney.
I'm talking Bobby Zamora. Yes, Zamora, of all strikers. Our former Funny Feeling Friday has never really had the best Premier League goalscoring record (though he did score an amazing 83 times in 136 appearances for Brighton and Hove Albion in the lower leagues), and he's never had an England National Team call up, but perhaps he deserves one.

Fabio Capello's choice of game on Sunday was the match between Birmingham and Fulham (above) which gave him a chance to look at two in form players who are getting calls from their respective managers to feature in the England Squad for South Africa Birmingham's on-loan Joe Hart and Fulham's on-form Bobby Zamora.

Someone on TiFF very kindly posted this 'amateur footage' of Bobby Zamora's free-kick winner on Sunday.

What I liked about this was that it showed how the wall was, I suspect, able to distract Hart to the point where he wasn't able to react to Zamora's shot in time (as we'll see, he was a millisecond away from it).

As quietly as a mouse, spring has sprung. The FA Cup quarter-final between Fulham and Tottenham Hotspur this afternoon is a 5.20 kick-off, but the sun is still glittering on the River Thames behind Craven Cottage as the teams kick off and the football season, which, throughout the winter months, starts to take on the feel of being endless, is starting to feel considerably more finite now.

Whoever came up with the idea of football matches being split into two halves with a break in the middle, is an absolute genius. Without that man, there would have been no words of dressing room wisdom from Harry and no half-time substitutions to change the game.

We arrived for the first half expecting something special, but got nothing but a limp display from Tottenham and the disappointment of going 1-0 down to a well taken Bobby Zamora goal.