Fulham goalkeeper David Stockdale is rumoured to be attracting the interest of London rivals West Ham United, with their very own Robert Green stalling over a contract.

Stockdale, when given the opportunity at Craven Cottage, has proven himself to be highly competent between the sticks but, with Mark Schwarzer calling the shots ever since 2008, the chance to truly impress the SW6 hierarchy has yet to come.

After a loan move to Ipswich Town was cut short last year, the keeper has been featured sparsely and, as such, has concerns over his future at the club. West Ham's interest, though, could ease his worries, as they struggle to tie down England international Robert Green.

Reports are suggesting that the Hammers may well bid £5 million for the services of Fulham's reserve goalkeeper, which, on paper, seems like a particularly good deal for Martin Jol. However, there are few clubs around who can boast a back up 'keeper of such ability, and the Fulham manager will be reluctant to see him leave.

There'll be no "I'ma let you finish, but", or any of Ricky Gervais' hard-hitting antics, but the Cottagers Confidential awards will be glamorous nonetheless. You've been voting - literally a few of you - over the past week to crown some of the stars, and some of the star moments, of Fulham's 2011/12 season. And here are your results:

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Clint Dempsey has thrown open the auction for his own head with a revelation that he would like to be playing Champions League football, thus confirming that his summer departure from Craven Cottage is all but guaranteed.

The 29 year-old has been in fine form for Fulham over the past three years, but his role in the team has become increasingly vital, culminating in last year's goal tally of 23 goals in all competitions - all despite the fact he plies his trade mostly from midfield. As such, Martin Jol has relied heavily on Dempsey for goals and the revelation that the American wants to leave will hit Fulham hard.

In an interview with Sports Illustrated magazine, he expressed his gratitude towards Fulham and all they have done for him personally, but appeared to set his departure in stone.

"I am grateful for everything Fulham have done for me," said Dempsey. "Some of the best memories I have in soccer have been there, but the fact remains that I want to play in Champions League. I want to play at the highest level possible"

Arsenal are still regarded front runners for his signature, and the lure of European football at the Emirates could well prove too much to bare for the American. The only certainty, though, seems to be his farewell to SW6.

"I want to do as much as I can in my career and look back and say I made the most of all the opportunities I have had.

"I am always going to want to play in Champions League.

"It is something I have never done. I would like to test myself at that level. That way I can look back and say, 'Hey, I gave it a go. Either I was good enough or I wasn't good enough'"

And just to affirm things, when speaking to FoxSoccer, the USA international opened the door to any potential bids: "If teams are really interested, they need to put their money with their mouth is and make an offer."

The promotion class of 2001 now has left just one remaining survivor and that, as a mark of success, goes further than any acclamation for the way that Fulham play or the way in which the club is run. But those two factors, of course, have a distinctive impact on the standing of our humble club and, in the season of 2011/12, we witnessed a myriad of elements that act as particularly strong signifies of a club that continues to progress.

It had its roller-coaster moments, like any season at any club, and there were damningly bleak times where it seemed as though heads would role and yet another new direction would be imposed upon us. Martin Jol, though, proved his mighty worth and steered Fulham quite admirably to 52 points - the same total as Liverpool.

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The Daily Mail are reporting that Fulham are on the verge of completing a £3.5 million deal for Huddersfield's prolific forward, Jordan Rhodes.

Supposedly, Jol has bee keen on the striker for a while and the opportunity has now arose to table a bid. A deal, if genuine, is expected to be struck after Rhodes plays his part in the League One play-off final between Huddersfield and Sheffield United.

Rhodes has caught the eye of many Premier League managers over the previous few months with his extensive scoring record but there is, too, a widely held belief that he might not make it at the highest level considering previous investments in players like Jay Bothroyd at Everton. Rhodes, however, with 40 goals to his name, could be a more promising purchase.

He played his first international game for Scotland in a friendly against Cyprus last November and hopes to retain a place in their setup.

With such acclamation behind him, it is no surprise that, would the deal with Fulham to go through, Jol would have beaten off attention from clubs such as Everton, Aston Villa and Norwich City in the process.

It is thought that the deal will be complete before Rhodes goes on holiday.

A certain Rudyard Kipling once said that "if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you" then you'd be, by way of honour, a man. If there was ever any doubt, over the course of this campaign, then, about the gender and about the personal traits and about the background of Martin Jol then it has finally, most assuredly, been answered. There was a sense, at many stages over this season, that heads would roll and the biggest would that of our manager's, but in his most calm and convincing manner, Chairman Mohammed Al Fayed stood by Jol and the Dutchman now, by all accounts, can be considered the manliest of men.

He stuck by his own grounded principles and let nothing slip - in a way that Mark Hughes, quite simply, couldn't. He followed through on quite risky promises - he lowered the average age of the squad and has allowed some of our most glittering young talents to shine, dazzle and glisten on one of the world's greatest footballing stages. He has continued to grace the fine Craven Cottage turf with a style of football that is brisk and pleasant and has, also, taken the good along with the bad and never appeared to be overly bothered. All the while, Fulham have finished ninth, level on points with Liverpool, a team of such damning pedigree, and finished the year with a certain sense of well-being and a prevalent thought that, come August, things could be even greater in SW6 and that Fulham are a club, for all intents and purposes, most definitely on the up.

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The task at hand seemed daunting enough but news has now appeared that, on our final match of the campaign, away at Tottenham Hotspur, Clint Dempsey will be unavailable after picking up a groin strain.

It's been a long, tough and yet ultimately fulfilling season for Fulham but it will be no testament to Dempsey, who has proved pivotal at some moments of quite vital importance, that he plays no part at White Hart Lane on Sunday. If there is one thing he deserves, it is a respectable send off and a goal would have topped his simply miraculous season off quite nicely.

The consensus still is that Dempsey will no longer play for Fulham by the time the 2012/13 season begins and, despite words from Martin Jol to the contrary, there is sombre acceptance all around Fulham that he will be plying his trade in SW6 no more. In that respect, last weekend's victory over Sunderland could well have been his last Fulham game, ever.

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Fulham manager Martin Jol has stated that a decision over the future of right back Zdenek Grygera will not be made until the player reaches full fitness - more than likely by mid-July.

Grygera has had an unfortunate time of it at Craven Cottage, impressing with his early season form before succumbing to a serious knee injury in November which ruled him out for the remainder of the season. He suffered ruptured knee ligaments in a tie with Tottenham Hotspur and his resilient displays throughout August, September and October are now but a distant memory.

And, with the Czech's deal set to run out in June, Jol is wary of jumping in to a new contract too quickly and is keen to assess Grygera before anything concrete is put on the table. The opportunity, though, says Jol, is still there to prove his worth to Fulham.

Speaking to the Fulham Chronicle, the Dutch manager said: "I feel we owe it to him to keep him here and get him fit, and then we can make a decision, or he can if he has other offers.

"The main thing for him is to get fit. That won't be until the middle of July and then we can make a decision.

"He did well from the first match, which is very unusual [for a player new to English football]. I was very happy with him.

"He can play left-back, right-back or centre-back, but it's not a minor injury. It isn't easy to come back to full fitness if you're that age."

Fulham striker Pavel Pogrebnyak has suggested that his current manager, Martin Jol, shoud apply for the Russian National Team job when it becomes available.

Dick Advocat is set to leave his Russia post after this summer's European Championships and take up a role as PSV Eindhoven manager, leaving a vast gap to fill in the Russian setup. There has been talk among national players that a foreign coach would be a preferred option and Pogrebnyak has put forward the idea of Jol.

Under the Dutchman, Pogrebnyak has drastically improved his standing in football, scoring six goals since signing in January and attracting interest from all over the Premier League in the process. The player himself, formerly of VFB Stuttgart, feels a great proportion of his recent success has been down to his supportive manager and the striker would love to see him appointed as coach of his national side.

"I agree with [Andriy] Arshavin, who is backing a foreign coach," Fulham's target man said. "For example [Luciano] Spalletti, who won the last two Russian championships with Zenit. Basically, I'm not against Spalletti taking over the [national] team, but I want to see our team coach Martin Jol - my coach at Fulham.

"In principle, I understand why Advocaat is going. He wanted to sign a new contract before the European Championships, and the RFU, in turn, wanted to wait until after the tournament."

Clint Dempsey has, by some quite extraordinary distance, played his way through his most prolific campaign in football and has come out of the other end as a player cherished by his club and also desired by many, far more affluent, others. He's displayed, this year, an ability to coax the very best of his talents into the open and parade them for all to see. The American is Fulham's top scorer, with 23 goals to match his number 23 shirt, and 6 Premier League assists, just, simply, to exemplify his rather compelling case.

No surprises, then, when Liverpool chairman, Tom Werner, expressed his admiration for the midfielder in what was a very poorly disguised invitation to ply his trade on Merseyside. "Any team would be lucky to have Clint Dempsey playing on their squad," were his words, and truthful and flattering though they were, they were not appreciated in SW6. However, you get the feeling that Dempsey is too good for Anfield now and that is the measurement of just how far this player has come.

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Bryan Ruiz is a footballer that is difficult to fathom at the best of times. He's something of an enigma, really; one that is capable of genuinely quite sublime mastery of the ball and an awareness of his ability to turn a game on its metaphorical head. But, he is also prone to a frustrating lack of urgency and, at times, appreciation of the pace of the English game and these mercurial traits have become a disconcerting phenomenon. We, as fans, have acknowledged as such and so has Martin Jol in his ever-decreasing faith in the Costa Rican.

However poorly we think of him, though, there is still that sense of boundless inherent potential that makes you feel as though the £11 million spent on him was somewhat worthy. Perhaps next season he can turn that feeling into something solidified and proven and there is hope, all around Fulham, that he can conquer this league and all that it throws at him. He just needs to, as they say, step it up.

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It's a sobering thought that Sunday's fixture at home to Sunderland could be the last time we see Clint Dempsey at Craven Cottage in white shirt. There have been moments over the past two years where you're left wondering quite where Fulham would be without his incandescent influence and impetus and, even before he began to shine quite so wondrously, we all knew this man had some boundless potential and that, some day, he'd be a player well worth writing home about.

Everything good thing must come to an end, however, and although it's saddening to think it, Dempsey probably has another chapter to his life that he, deservingly, would like to fulfil. For all it's worth, he needs a send off on Sunday afternoon that would be worthy of any Fulham legend.

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At first they were just rumours but the talk is beginning to strengthen. The latest club to have solidified their interest in Clint Dempsey appears to be Liverpool, with chairman Tom Werner declaring his admiration for the American midfielder.

Over recent months Dempsey has been linked to clubs all the way across Europe but the feeling has been that Arsene Wenger and his Arsenal team have had to most authentic impetus to lodge a bid over the summer months. It is said they have sent scouts to track Fulham's key player and they have reported back to Wenger favourably.

Having yet again topped Fulham's scoring charts and appearing in the higher echelons of the Premier League's top scorer list, despite plying his trade mainly in midfield, Dempsey is considered to be having a career defining season that has, undoubtedly, perked the ears of many top clubs. Liverpool are but the latest.

Werner's appraisals were short but they were equally sharp: "We never talk publicly about our transfer targets," said the Liverpool chairman. "However, any team would be lucky to have Clint Dempsey playing on their squad."

Quite the acclamation. However, it will remain to be seen as to whether a move to Merseyside would interest Dempsey, who has regularly spoken of his desire to play Champions League football. The only European football at Anfield next season will be the Europa League and Dempsey is a player already aware of the arduous nature of such a campaign.

Whether Werner's eagerness to declare an interest in the player will spark a similar reaction at sides such as Arsenal and Tottenham, both of whom have been linked with Dempsey in the past, remains to be seen. What is a virtual certainty, however, is that these rumours will come to the surface come June.

Ahead of Sunday's fixture with Sunderland, I had a chat with the guys at Roker Report about all things Fulham and Sunderland. Here is what they had to say:

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As fine as our end of season form invariably has been over the past few years, there's always a somewhat sobering thought that there's a particularly minimal chance of it spilling over into the fortunes of the next campaign. It's a worrying phenomenon that, ultimately, stems back to the genetically inconsistent ways of this Fulham team that can defeat Queens Park Rangers 6-0 on one weekend and then get bewilderingly humbled the next at Stoke City.

And it's, unfortunately, a problem that has never been sought to be corrected - there's almost an acceptance now at Craven Cottage that however good the football at the end of the year, the story will be different come a fresh start. Mark Hughes, when taking charge of the club, named himself an "end of season manager", and, it seems his methodologies rubbed off rather quickly on the whole team.

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Fulham made a piece of history last night, at least in their own right. A Martin Skrtel own goal gifted Fulham their first ever win at Anfield and with three former Liverpool players in the Whites starting line-up, the result couldn't have been any more damning for a beleaguered Kenny Dalglish.

His side now find themselves level on points with Fulham - only a superior goal difference keeping them in eighth place - and in many ways the demise of this Merseyside club told more of a story than Fulham's victory here. That didn't stop the celebrations, however, and this day will go down in the SW6 records books for its prominence. We've done the double over Dalglish's side now and there's a distinct feeling that, under Martin Jol, we can well and truly mix with the best, for this was a fine performance in both class and resilience.

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The link between Nacer Chadli and a £3 million move to Fulham persisted yesterday, with the Daily Mail reporting that the winger's agent, Daniel Evrad, stated the transfer was a virtual certainty. Since, however, validity of the source and of the agent's translation has been questionable.

Rumours have been abound for months of Martin Jol's interest in the FC Twente winger, having witnessed the 22 year old's talents while in charge at Ajax. Jol hasn't been the only party supposedly after Chadli, though, with Tottenham Hotspur also chasing him.

The Mail article, however, suggests that the player's agent has all-but-confirmed that Fulham will be Chadli's final destination.

"He has a 99 per cent chance of leaving with Fulham his destination," said Evrad.

Some sources claim that these weren't the exact words of Evrad, though, and that Fulham were never mentioned. What is considered certain, nonetheless, is that Chadli will not be a Twente player come season's end.

Few would believe that revisiting Merseyside, merely three days after a demoralising 4-0 defeat at the hands of Everton, is the perfect remedy to a stagnation in form. Perhaps, though, it is, and perhaps we'll return to London after our extended weekend break in Liverpool with at least a faint smile, and maybe a point or three out of a possible six. It's all dependent, of course, on whether we can over come this irritating, seemingly genetic inferiority complex that comes with games away from Craven Cottage.

It's been a prevalent part of each Fulham season since, is feels, the dawn of time. The issue has hardened in the Premier League years and reached its unfortunate peak since relegation threatened us, knocked on the door and almost got a foot in during the 2007/08 season. Since then, the Hodgson years taught us to defend robustly, resolutely and, to a certain extent, put attacking thoughts into the background. Mark Hughes tried to fix it but didn't quite have the guts to see it through and credit must go to current manager Martin Jol - who has led his side to three away wins, a cosmic statistic in relative Fulham terms - for at least trying to water down the ghostly travelling myth. The problem is, though, is that this is no myth. As soon as a coach is boarded, the gloom sets in.

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Martin Jol will have been glad he stayed at home. At least from there, he didn't have to witness the capitulation of his Fulham side to Everton, stretching the record of eighteen straight defeats at Goodison Park to a not-so-fancy nineteen. In fairness, victory for the Whites was never really on the cards but there was at least some optimism in the air. That was quickly banished, however, with a Nikica Jelavic penalty setting the tone early on. Three more goals would come and it was an afternoon that Billy McKinlay and Michael Lindeman would doubtlessly rather forget.

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Martin Jol has been ill throughout the week, to such an extent that it still isn't clear whether he will travel with his Fulham side to Goodison Park, where they face an Everton side in quite sterling form. Perhaps, though, he isn't ill and is instead just avoiding the inevitable; the inevitable being a bleak and foreseeable defeat on Merseyside that would bring the tally to nineteen. In a row. I'd feign sickness if I knew those statistics.

Every side has their Achilles heel - a side they can never seem to fathom nor get around. For Fulham, David Moyes' men are that team and the facts and records continue to unravel, none of them looking at all favourable. We haven't won there in Premier League history and our F.A Cup defeat at their hands earlier in the campaign proved that remedy could not be found outside of league football. What sombre reading.

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It was on eve of the visit to Simon Davies' old stomping ground that the question of the Welshman's future was flung to Fulham manager Martin Jol. He responded in his somewhat trademark cautionary tone, neither affirming or denying the possibility that the 2011/12 season will be his last at Craven Cottage.

There was an underlying tone to his answer, though, that suggested Davies would indeed be a Fulham player no more after the summer has elapsed. The winger has been something of a bit-part player throughout Jol's reign but this was, on the most part, due to his injury enforced absence earlier in the campaign.

Since returning he hasn't broken into the first team in the manner which he is accutsomed to, after proving a stalwart under previous managers Roy Hodgson and Mark Hughes.

Jol seemed to feel no sympathy, however, citing his ageing squad as a reason for the changing times.

"He was involved at first, but was injured for eight, nine months," said the Fulham manager. "Then I took him back.

"But I've got a few youngsters and I don't want to just create a space for the older players all the time - and I think I had to do this from the start of the season.

"The only youngster playing here was Matthew Briggs and the average age was 31, so it was the oldest team in Europe."

"[Davies] is a great boy.

"He can play on the left, on the right, or in midfield and I can even use him as a right back like I did before, so yes, he could still have a future here.

"If they give their best, then there's no problem with me. But you have to ask him if he wants to stay, I don't know."

The hope of keeping Moussa Dembele, amidst all the rumours surrounding team mate Clint Dempsey's likely Fulham departure, have taken a blow, with news that Manchester United, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool are all now chasing the Belgian's signature.

Dembele has been a revelation for Fulham since signing under Mark Hughes' tutorship in the summer of 2010. At a then cost of £5 million, the midfielder-cum-striker was wrangled from the hands of Birmingham City - who had supposedly already agreed a deal with the player - and settled wonderfully into the Craven Cottage setup.

His ability on the ball is his most potent, threatening and enticing trait. The former AZ Alkmaar player has close control that is almost unrivalled across the Premier League and it opens up spaces in a game that has proven invaluable to Fulham over his two seasons in SW6.

The only area in which Dembele is ever criticised is his lack of goals. Despite regularly finding himself in suitable positions, he rarely finds the net - evidential in his return of only six goals in all competitions since setting foot in London.

That hasn't stopped the interest from increasing over the course of the season and his fine form has now alerted, amongst others, Manchester United and Arsenal. Sir Alex Ferguson could well see him as a perfect candidate for a central midfield role as, over recent weeks, Fulham manager Martin Jol has proven Dembele to be well adept to playing in the middle of the park.

United and Arsenal will face competition from Spurs and Liverpool although the draw of Champions League football may well attract him to Manchester. As it is, Jol will be loathe to lose one of his most prized assets at Fulham, especially given the expected departure of leading goalscorer Clint Dempsey.

Martin Jol is said to be keeping tabs on Huddersfield Town right back, Jack Hunt, with a view to bringing him in over the summer period.

Jol has always acknowledged that a right back has been a necessity and he believed he had solved the problem with the capture of former Juventus full back Zdenek Grygera. The Czech right back impressed in his opening spell, but soon succumbed to injury and was ruled out for the season.

Stephen Kelly has filled the void since although there are some doubts over his consistency. On occasion he is solid and astute but other times he's somewhat shaky.

As such, Jol sent scouts on the look out for cover and they were seen watching Hunt in a 1-0 Huddersfield win over Scunthorpe on Saturday, guaranteeing them a play off place. Hunt has won a place in the League One team of the year.

Rivals to his signature will be Sunderland and Arsenal, also said to have representatives at the game.