Five of Fulham’s biggest bad boys

We’ve had a torrid week in the press, haven’t we? Mitro is the worst thing to happen to football since all-seater stadiums, Marco Silva should hand in his coaching badges, and the club should offer the world an apology for daring to deviate from it’s reputation as a nice and inoffensive football club. 

And that’s what we’ve been known as for the majority of our history. But we have had a couple of bad boys don the famous white shirt in the past. Here are a few of them. 

Michael Brown 

Browny received seven red cards in his career – and one of those game just five games into his stay in SW6. He has always had the reputation of a tough-tackling, no-nonsense midfielder. Made captain by then-manager Chris Coleman, Brown was once accused by Sir Alex Ferguson for trying to end Ryan Giggs’s career with a stamp that only saw him booked. 

But the real controversy came after a challenge on former Fulham great Sean Davis, who accused him of trying to deliberately injure him in a challenge that earned him his marching orders. Davis, then playing for Portsmouth, said “He tried to break my leg. I know as I saw him look at me and I know he tried to do me.”

The accusation led Brown to put forward the classic defence of “I’m not that kind of player”. But he later reflected: “I have had a full mixed bag when it comes to tackling. Some I have gone for and been a bit unlucky, others I have been just plain wrong. I have looked at some and thought, ‘You stupid idiot. Why did you do that?’”

Andrew Cole 

Cole’s in here for one incident alone – but it was infamous. Dubbed (by me just now) as the ‘Hawthorns Haymaker’, ‘call-me-Andrew’ was one of two Fulham players sent off in a feisty encounter that saw three players in total take early baths. 

Cole’s dismissal was by far the tastiest. Look, if you’re going to get a red, then make it count eh? He saw red – figuratively and literally – for throwing a punch at West Brom’s Neil Clement, who had just been sent off himself after bagging a second yellow for tripping Luis Boa Morte in the game’s dying minutes. 

Papa Bouba Diop had been sent off earlier in the game for pushing Clement, who’d done fantastically well boiling Fulham piss all afternoon. Cole was initially banned for six games by the FA, but it was reduced to four after a Fulham appeal. 

Aboubakar Kamara 

Oh, Kamara. What a bloke. We all know why he’s on this list. Not many Fulham players have been arrested at Motspur Park and been banned by the club from “all club activities”. 

He was arrested on suspicion of actual bodily harm in January 2019 after an altercation with a member of security while trying to get some face time with CEO Alistair Macintosh. This is, of course, during our dumpster fire of a season in 2018/19. 

It wasn’t even his first incident of the campaign. He was involved in another training ground bust-up a week earlier, this time with football’s new Lucifer, Mitro. Reports claim that the squad had to pull the pair apart during a yoga session, as tempers boiled over, stemming from Kamara nicking the ball off Mitro to take a penalty against Huddersfield, which he promptly missed. Hollywood stuff. Abu – you are missed. 

Fernando Amorebieta 

Our former centre-back from Venezuela is included here for totting up three red cards in just 44 appearances for the Whites. That’s a dismissal every 14 games, which is really quite impressive. 

Fernando gets an extra mention for chowing down on an opponent’s skull while playing for Cerro Punto in Paraguay, three years after leaving Fulham. Maybe he was inspired by being the victim of a bite himself, when Souleymane Doukara chewed on his arm during a 1-1 draw with Leeds at Elland Road, where – surprise, surprise – Amorebieta found a way to get sent off himself. 

Luis Boa Morte 

Luis Boa, despite his infectious smile, could be a hot head on the pitch. He’s included on this list solely for racking up the most red cards of any other Fulham player in history, with four (albeit one was overturned after the referee wrongly sent him off for an alleged bite on Everton’s David Weir). 

In fact, our assistant manager sits 10th on the all-time Premier League red card table, with six. Ahead of him are classic villains Duncan Ferguson, Roy Keane and Vinnie Jones. To witness him turn peacemaker in his older years at Old Trafford was heartwarming, really.