Fulham has the most timeless feel of any London football club, yet its history contains a vivid streak of unorthodoxy
Geographically, west London football rivals Fulham and Chelsea could hardly be closer - you can stroll the distance between the clubs' respective grounds in half an hour easily - and with one of them (the one in blue) right at the top of the Premier League and other (the one in white) at the very bottom, their derby match today (Saturday) will be contested with particular intensity.
The clash also provides me with a shamelessly thin excuse for running the rather surreal clip below, featuring Mohamed Al Fayed handing ownership of the club over to Pakistani-American auto parts billionaire Shahid Khan last July.
What a curious pair. Al Fayed's shirt reminds me of that rather good Ted Nugent joke at the end of Ocean's 11. Khan's mustache just makes me smile, though any initial impression that he's some comic character has been sharply dispelled by his subsequent sacking of two managers, one of them after just 74 days in charge.
Fulham has always been thought of as a homely, slightly eccentric, old-fashioned little club - "so pleasingly traditional you can still sometimes smell the varnish on its wooden seats," as Sean Ingle wrote - but things have moved on at Craven Cottage since the days when cockney variety show star Tommy Trinder was the club's chairman. Mind you, Trinder did both hire and fire Bobby Robson, so maybe not everything has changed at the quaint little ground down by the Thames.
via Football news, match reports and fixtures | theguardian.com http://ift.tt/NF2jGK
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