Joachim Andersen is the perfect man to replace Tom Cairney as Fulham captain

Our Danish centre-back is enjoying a fine start to the campaign with the armband on.

What makes a great captain?

Is it their propensity to galvanise their teammates when things are going wrong? Is it their diplomacy skills when dealing with the referee? Or is it their ability to lead by example; by being consistently being the best player on the pitch?

Joachim Andersen is hitting all of these touchpoints so far this season – and he increasingly looks to be the perfect candidate to replace Tom Cairney as club captain once our skipper departs in the summer.

He’s arrived

Joa’s man-of-the-match performance against Brentford showed exactly what we paid £30m for him last summer. He was defensively resolute, and offensively astute, threading a wonderful long ball for Sess in the build-up to our third.

He came in for a fair bit of criticism last season, the majority of which was likely due to his price tag and age profile. We expected him to come in and hit the ground running, particularly as he knew the league well having performed so well for Crystal Palace for three years.

But he took a little while to re-acclimatise his to surroundings in SW6. That’s not to say he had a terrible campaign. While defensively solid overall, he came in for criticism in some quarters for a dip in pace and a lack of long ball accuracy, something he was revered for in the past and certainly something we would’ve hoped for when paying for him.

But it looks like it was just Andersen finding his feet, and this season he’s really purring. And it’s clear Marco sees him as the man to lead the side. Scott Parker saw it too, of course, handing him the armband for almost half our games in 2020/21.

A long-term asset

There have been concerns about spending so much on a player of Andersen’s age, leaving little-to-no resale value. But I’m a strong advocate of signing some players for the here and now. Frankly, who cares how much we get of Joa if he performs on the pitch during this five-year deal and starts to represent the club as our figurehead off it? He’s then more than repaying his fee.

Andersen was born to be a captain. He has the defensive consistency and prowess of a Brede Hangeland (plus now the haircut to boot), the footballing brain of Danny Murphy in the way he reads the game, and he leads by performance on the pitch, much like TC and Luis Boa Morte in years gone by. He’s got all the qualities you need from a captain. And if we can reap the benefits of that from him for the next four years, then £30m, in my opinion, is a snip.

We have enjoyed a really strong start to this campaign, and a lot of that is due to our robustness in defence. If we continue at this clip we could surpass 60 points, and if that happens who knows where that places us. One thing is for sure, we’ll need Andersen firing on all cylinders if we want to get there.

So far, so good.