Supporter and columnist Giles Smith found himself come over all neighbourly at the Cottage yesterday. He gives here his full seasonal assessment.


It wouldn't be Christmas if you didn't have to pop in on some slightly annoying neighbours at some point, and, accordingly, yesterday's visit to Fulham had the feel of a traditional, festive duty about it.

As we all know, the best tactic on these occasions is to smile as cheerfully as possible, drink and eat whatever is offered to you, avoid contentious topics of conversation, and then leave exactly on the final whistle, clutching all three points if at all possible.

Neighbourly Christmas duty done, then, in the case of yesterday's outing. And now we can go back to simply waving at them from the other side of the street.

You'll remember that, at roughly this time last year, it was our turn to have Fulham round for mince pies and how, in the absence of Petr Cech and John Terry, the gathering abruptly and catastrophically devolved into a small comedy of social embarrassment, leading to the deeply unnecessary loss of two points.

This year, spookily enough, we were lacking Cech and Terry again, but also - just to make it even more fun - we were also lacking Cudicini, Carvalho, Lampard, Drogba, Shevchenko, Malouda, Makelele, and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh. In other words, there was more talent in our sick-or-suspended room than has passed through Fulham in the last quarter of a century. And I'm including Michael 'the King of Pop' Jackson - a one-time visitor to the Cottage, but always looking out for their results, even to this day - in that assessment.

One suspected that Fulham would be thoroughly incentivised altogether. Not only was there the 'local rivalry' which it seems to amuse Fulham fans to imagine existing between us, there was also the arrival of Roy Hodgson, whose first game in charge this match was.

Bad enough to face a side playing to impress a new manager. Facing a side that is playing to impress a new manager exactly as the transfer window is opening? well, there should be a rule giving you a goal start in such circumstances because the playing field is, clearly, well and truly unlevelled.

Sure enough, Fulham seemed to possess what was, for them, an uncommon amount of enthusiasm in the first half, going at us exactly like a bunch of people who were playing as though as their ability to earn a comfortable living much beyond mid-January depended on it, which, in several cases, it obviously did.

And yet we prevailed. Impressive stuff, I think, and probably, in the circumstances, the best of our Christmas results, although the away win at Blackburn had its merits, and the home victory over Newcastle was promisingly fluid and deserved, even though Kalou, scoring in front of the Matthew Harding, must have looked offside even from the bathroom in Ken Bates' old apartment.

'Don't worry,' one would have liked to have said to Sam Allardyce after the match, 'these things even themselves out over the course of the season.' But then, of course, it dawned on one that he wasn't likely to be around for the course of the season in order to see this magical process work itself out. Ah, well.

The only one of the Christmas results which threatened to fuse the tree-lights was the contentious draw on Boxing Day against Aston Villa. Eight goals, three sendings off, two penalties and a last-minute equaliser? newspapers enjoyed describing this as 'the game that had everything', but they were wrong, because what it didn't have was three points for us at the end of it, without which, in my experience, no match can truly be said to have been any good, let alone to have had everything.

And really it ought to have yielded three points for us, television pictures revealing afterwards that Ashley Cole legitimately lowered his head and shoulder to clear that shot off the line, and didn't use his hand at all.

It is depressing enough, in a tight title race, to suffer the loss of two points to this error of judgement, but losing the player to an unmerited and perfectly avoidable suspension as well is almost comical in its unfairness. There really ought to be an FA-authorised panel that a club can appeal to on occasions such as this, to avoid the game being turned into a joke.

What's that? You're saying there is such a panel, but that it doesn't do anything? Blimey. Those clever people at the FA think of everything.