Keeping the Focus

Fulham’s recent victory over Aston Villa crucially pulled the Whites to within striking distance of Premiership safety. Fulham now sit on 19 points, three behind Reading and Birmingham and four behind Wigan.

Although Fulham missed an opportunity to further close the gap on Saturday, narrowly losing to Middlesbrough at the Riverside Stadium, defender Moritz Volz was keen to stress the importance of remaining focussed on the task at hand.

“We’ve played quite a few games and we were struggling to get our first win so it was a great relief when we beat Aston Villa at home,” he said. “It was important to get our confidence up. Therefore the win was huge and I think there was a great feeling of relief around the place.

“We wanted to get at least a point at Middlesbrough but we came away with nothing. It’s not the end of the world but we need to make up for those points somewhere else.

“But really our situation hasn’t changed; we still have a huge task on our hands because we are still in the bottom three with fewer games remaining.

“We need to concentrate on ourselves and not the results of the teams around us because we can’t influence them. We can only influence our own performances so that’s what we need to focus on.”

With no fixture this weekend, the Whites have been hard at work on the training field with the ultimate goal of taking all three points from the next home match against West Ham United.

“In training we focus on what we want to do in terms of attacking and defending,” said Volz. “A lot of the work is movement patterns that enable us to get a better chance of passing the ball, creating chances and also keeping a good defensive shape.

“The game at Upton Park wasn’t too long ago. We lost 2-1 and were disappointed but this is a home game and although we’re facing a team in the top half of the table, we’ll be pushing to get three points.”