With Fulham preparing for this weekend’s match against Manchester City (buy tickets), Captain Danny Murphy gave his thoughts on the upcoming fixture against Mark Hughes’ team and looked back on last month’s displays.
Two home wins and two successive clean sheets against Liverpool and Aston Villa. You must be pretty happy with how the month of November went?
Yes. I think we’ve progressed really well since earlier in the season with our mentality and our approach to away games. We were very aware of our poor away record and we’ve spoken a lot about trying to make sure we become tougher and more difficult to beat.
When you go away to teams in the top four, like Liverpool and Aston Villa, and perform the way we did, it shows how far we’ve come. It’s just important that we move on from that now, move forward and try to create a few more chances so we can go on and win games. But firstly we had to make sure we became more solid.
I think everyone’s really happy, but we’ve got to be careful to not become too confident and too pleased with ourselves, because we know in this league that as soon as you do that you can be brought back down to earth quite quickly.
We've spent the last few years coming back from Liverpool with our tails between our legs. It was especially sweet coming away from Anfield with a point last month. You must have been pretty proud returning to Anfield as captain and keeping them at bay?
Very much so. It was the first time I’ve been back to Anfield and come away with anything, so that was very nice, because of the fact that we got the point and the performance. The quality with which we played in the first-half was as well as I think we’ve played away from home.
And of course, being the captain as well, it means that I must be doing part of my job right. Obviously, the way I play is just as important, but trying to help others and encouraging and organising is part of my job and I hope I’m doing that well. I think the team is progressing and any time that you go to a place like Liverpool and get a result, everyone deserves credit, but from a personal point of view it was a great day and it made me very proud.
It's incredible that after collecting eight points in November we're still only four points off the relegation zone. Do you think it's possible for the table to remain this tight for the duration of the season?
I don’t think it will stay this tight, but I think what’s important is that when there is a little breakaway of clubs, we’re not one of the ones heading downwards and the only way to do that is to maintain a level of performance, as we are at the moment.
There are some games coming up over Christmas that we feel we can win, but of course, it’s not all going to be plain sailing, it never is, you’re always going to have some bad days and some results not going your way.
One week we might play well and lose, the next we might play awfully and win, who knows? But the one thing that’s for sure is that we’re all very aware of what happened last season and we know that come January, after the busy Christmas period, it will be a good indicator of how the rest of the season is going to pan out. But I do think the league will split up a bit. I don’t think it can carry on this tight because if it does, it’s going to be an interesting few months ahead!
Wwe just need to concentrate, not so much on the teams below and above us, but on ourselves, because by playing to the levels we have done recently I think we will continue to pick up points. The main thing is not to become too complacent and comfortable with the fact that we’ve had some good results and that we’re in a reasonably comfortable position in the table, because it can easily turn, and we’ve got to be very aware of that.
We can pull away a bit this weekend but you never know quite what to expect from Manchester City at the moment. Have you studied them much recently and if so which of their players have impressed you?
Yeah, I’ve seen them quite a few times. At times they play some wonderful football and are a joy to watch, but of course, with such individual flair and characters in their team they can be susceptible on the break. So we have to be trying to attack them and make sure that we have a good go at them, because I think their attacking is probably their strength - you can see that by their goals for tally. So we need to try and go out and win the match - we certainly won’t be going into it cautiously.
Like every team in the Premier League they’ve got players that can hurt you and players who, on their day, can win matches so it will be a good game. They play football the right way, they don’t whack it, they knock it about, so I think the fans will be in for a really good game.
We've got five fixtures during the Christmas period and the derby game on the 28th has already sold out. The level of support, especially at home, has been superb this season. Is it something the players have noticed or discussed in the dressing room?
We’ve definitely noticed that our support has been more encouraging than last season, but that’s partly our own fault because we didn’t give them much to sing about last season!
Our home support has been great, because we’ve played well and the team has seen some good attacking football but I think, more importantly for me and some of the other lads, we really do appreciate the away support, because it’s tough going away.
Sometimes you’re under the cosh and in the last couple of weeks we’ve been up against two teams in games where the so-called pundits in the media had us down as getting beaten. But we had the belief to go out and get results and the fans shared that belief because they traveled to watch us, so it is something that’s been spoken about and something that we hope will long continue because, as I’ve said before, it does make a difference especially in games like those.
I remember up at Liverpool in the last 10 minutes when we were defending for our lives and our fans were only a stone’s throw away, encouraging us, so it does make a difference, players nationwide will tell you that.
