Europa League / Ralph Ellis / 27 April 2010 /

Fulham earned an excellent goalless draw in Germany last week but their out of form opponents will be galvanised by the sacking of their manager. Ralph Ellis has a very unpatriotic bet of the week...

There's probably nothing more dangerous in all of football than playing a team who have just sacked their manager. All of a sudden a group of hopeless, unhappy players, who have been more interested in arguing with each other than winning, become a band of brothers.

For a game or two it doesn't really matter who is in charge. The guy in temporary control, of course, always claims that an upturn in results shows he deserves a crack at it full time. In reality you could literally put the caretaker in charge - complete with broom, mop and bucket - and the effect would be much the same.

An atmosphere of doom and negativity is lifted, replaced by one of relief and relaxed confidence. Have a look through this season and see some of the evidence. Hull might be getting relegated, but in the two matches after Phil Brown was put on gardening leave they got within a minute of their first away win in 17 months, and then beat Fulham at home. Bolton responded to the departure of Gary Megson by scoring four goals in an FA Cup tie. Manchester City went on a run of four successive wins as soon as Mark Hughes was out of the door. Even rock bottom Portsmouth beat Burnley and Liverpool during the three weeks after Paul Hart left.

There are even more glaring examples of the "caretaker effect" lower down the leagues - Bristol City took 14 points from 18 after Gary Johnson's number two Keith Millen took over. And Brian McDermott stepped up from the backroom staff to transform Reading from relegation certainties to outside play-off hopefuls.

So sorry, any Craven Cottage fans, but the best bet of all the midweek football has suddenly become to lay Fulham at [2.22] for their Europa League second leg against Hamburg. The German club might have been held to a 0-0 draw by Roy Hodgson's side on their own ground, may also have won just four of their last 15 Bundesliga games, leaving them five points off qualifying for Europe again with just two games to play. But they have just sacked their coach Bruno Labbadia and that will change the whole picture.

"It was the last moment for us to react," said chairman Bernd Hoffmann as he analysed a 5-1 trouncing at Hoffenheim on Sunday, before installing skills coach Ricardo Moniz to bring the side to London for Thursday's semi-final second leg.

Labbadia had been in charge only 10 months but had clearly lost his dressing room. Brazilian Ze Roberto came back a week late from his winter holiday; Ruud van Nistelrooy got stroppy - understandably for one of the game's great strikers - about being asked to play as a deep lying midfield man; and his captain and goalkeeper Frank Rost resigned his place on the players' council in protest at being rebuked by the boss for taking five team mates to watch Clash of the Titans the night before a game.

Moniz, who was once on Tottenham's backroom team and was described by some pundits as the "keepy-uppy coach", is hailed by his chairman as being "incredibly enthusiastic". And that spells bad news for Fulham, especially if Bobby Zamora is still not fit. The players will take his mood and be just as keen - and that's a twist that Fulham, going into their 59th game of an epic season, could well have done without.

Five things you might not know about Ricardo Moniz

1. Born June 1964, he played for FC Eindhoven's youth and reserve side as a defender or midfield man but was transferred back to his home town club Haarlem at the age of 20 to make his debut in the Dutch Eredivisie

2. He played a further 162 games in the Dutch League, moving to RKC Waalwijk before returning to Eindhoven to work with the youth teams

3. He studied under skills coach Will Coerver, and was recruited for Tottenham by Martin Jol in 2005 as skills coach to work both with the first team and Academy

4. He fell out with Juande Ramos because he was no longer working with the senior players, so followed Jol to Hamburg in June 2008.

5. In Sega's Football Manager 2010 he's the very best coach to put on your staff if you want to improve set pieces. Maybe that's how Hamburg's chairman got the idea!

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