Their manager, Rafael Benitez, put the defeat down to Warner's excellence and his side's inability to find the net. The replacement stepped straight into Liverpool's high-level bombardment and repelled everything thrown at him in a hectic last 30 minutes. Sven Goran Eriksson was there, too, though quite what he was looking at was a mystery, since Jamie Carragher was the sole Englishman on display.Even the second-half arrival of Peter Crouch and Tony Warner merely raised the total of those qualified to play for Eriksson to three. Warner's turned out to be the vital contribution after Mark Crossley - playing only his second game since returning from knee surgery - pulled a hamstring on the hour.
Their second win of the season was joyfully received with chants of "Johnny Haynes" from the sell-out crowd and the assertion on the public address that "The Maestro" would be proud of Fulham.Among those watching were some of Haynes' old team-mates and friends: Jimmy Hill, George Cohen, Tosh Chamberlain, Alan Mullery. Then, amid swelling frenzy and a raft of substitutions, Fulham fought off an overdue Liverpool resurgence and sealed victory in added time with a coolly taken Luis Boa Morte goal. A case could be made for offside on both of the goals, but no one in the home camp was complaining. Peter Moores, who has replaced Marsh as director of the National Academy - now recycled as the National Cricket Centre - does not have a moustache. It is hard to envisage him lambasting (in public at any rate) the next crop of England's finest.. England's last tour of Pakistan began with some mild eyebrow-raising when Duncan Fletcher's contract was extended for a year. Not a hair anywhere will twitch so much as a micron if it is announced today that the coach has been awarded a job for life, together with a hereditary peerage and the freedom of whichever place in the United Kingdom suits him.
Viscount Fletcher of Cardiff (via Harare and Cape Town) has a certain ring to it. Fletcher, still plain Duncan for the moment, would balk at such trappings. This is the man who confesses in his memoir of the unforgettable summer just passed that he felt uncomfortable standing with his players on the victory rostrum at The Oval.. Strange are the ways in which goalkeepers find their true vocation. Peter Shilton, star of his primary-school team, used to play at wing-half or centre-forward, score a goal or two and then go between the sticks to defend the lead. Pat Jennings gave up the game for Gaelic football before being talked into training with his brother's team when the keeper left. Bob Wilson was given a proper jersey for Christmas and started catching footballs in the back garden instead of kicking them.For Petr Cech, last line of the meanest defence English football has known, it was a tale of a young team-mate who didn't turn up and then a bad injury "I started as a winger or in midfield," he recalled.
