Sanchez gets back to work

How the mighty have fallen. Five weeks ago, Lawrie Sanchez was the manager of a Barclays Premier League club and his weekly Fulham press conferences were carried live on Sky Sports News. Yesterday, the former Northern Ireland manager popped up on Eurosport as a pundit for the station's live coverage of the African Cup of Nations matches between Nigeria and Benin and the Ivory Coast and Mali.

Sanchez has been keeping a low profile since he was shown the door ar Craven Cottage just before Christmas but obviously the lure of the African Cup of Nations is too strong. Although Sanchez got a warm welcome on the Eurosport sofa from Gary Imlach, at Fulham his name is now dirt and it is spat out by supporters who blame him for jeopardising the club's top flight status by splurging £25 million on new players last summer.

Sanchez's policy was to sign only British players or players who had experience of playing in British leagues, so it was intriguing to see him passing judgment on Eurosport on players who he would would not have touched with a bargepole a few months ago.

Imagine if Fulham had signed Taye Taiwo instead of Paul Konchesky, or John Utaka instead of David Healy, or Sulley Muntari insetad of Steve Davis, or anyone instead of Shefki Kuqi.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but in Sanchez's defence he did sign Diomansy Kamara, the Senegal forward, who turned out to be useless and Roy Hodgson has not won a game since he replaced Sanchez a  month ago.

Fulham were not pretty to watch under Sanchez, but they would not have gone down without a fight.

Kaveh Solhekol