Having spent the majority of his football career to date at clubs in the north of England, Fulham’s last permanent signing of the summer transfer window is glad to be back home in the capital.
Dickson Etuhu is a happy man. The 26-year-old may have only been a Fulham player for six days when we sit down to talk after a rare training session at Craven Cottage midway through the recent fixture break, but he already has the air of a person at ease in his surroundings, content that he has made the right career move.
Smiling and talkative in his first interview as a Fulham player, Dickson kicks-off by going some way to explaining why he’s sure that switching Sunderland for South West London was the right decision.
“I grew up in Peckham, so it’s nice to come back home after 10 years,” he begins, before giving a brief summary of his well-travelled career to date. “I left when I was younger to go to Man City, and I played a few games there, but decided to leave to get some more football. So then David Moyes took me to Preston for three-and-a-half years where I played almost 150 games, and then I went to Norwich, played more than 50 matches there and then went from Norwich to Sunderland.
“At Sunderland I played half of their first Premier League season, but then I got injured and I’m just on my way back from injury now, and here at Fulham. It’s great to be home.”
So there is a sense that the one-time Londoner is ready to settle back in his hometown after a decade of roaming, but it wasn’t just the location that proved attractive about Fulham.
”I couldn’t have asked for a better move to be honest. It was the hardest decision of my career, because Sunderland didn’t want me to go and I had a lot of friends there, but as soon as I spoke to the Manager here at Fulham I knew that I had to come here, because he can teach me and make me the player I should be. So I’m looking forward to working with him and the rest of the players, because we’ve got some top, top players here. I’m very, very excited.”
Etuhu’s move south was touted for a few weeks before it was finalised, and Roy Hodgson’s admission in his Arsenal pre-match press conference that he was looking for a “defensive, strong, tall type of central midfield player” in the mould of Patrick Vieira added further weight to the rumours. But Dickson is uncomfortable with any comparisons with the former Arsenal star, although he does admit there are similarities in their playing style and the service they both offer their team.
“I just want to come in and do well,” he says. “I don’t want people to confuse or compare me with anybody else. I’ve been compared with him [Vieira] lots of times so it’s nothing new, but if I can be a quarter of the player he was I’ll be a very happy man. I’m just looking to come here, play well, be myself and do well for the Club. And I can’t wait to get fit and run out in front of the fans and play well for my Manager and my team-mates.
“Obviously I can provide that protection in front of the back four, making the tackles. I don’t give it easy, I like to get the ball moving and give it to people like Jimmy and the skipper, and allow them to play.”
Regardless of comparisons with others, Dickson’s arrival was described in some quarters as the final piece of the jigsaw that Roy Hodgson has spent the summer carefully constructing. The success of his squad rebuilding will, of course, be judged at the end of the season, but early signs are good as the Whites have already outplayed Arsenal and shown the required character to fight back from behind in the Carling Cup against Leicester. However, Etuhu is reluctant to speculate as to what might be achieved over the next nine months.
“I don’t know. We’re just going to take every game as it comes,” he says. “Everybody’s got to fight for their place in the team, I’ve got to fight for my spot too, that’s football. All everybody’s doing at the moment is looking to get in that team on a Saturday and win as many games as we can. We can’t say we’re going to finish here or there, we’ve got to do what we can do on the day. It’s 90 minutes across the white line, get the job done, then go home to your family and start again next time. It’s simple. You just get out there and show people what you can do and be together, be a team, and we’ll do that well, because we’ve got the quality.”
Quality is something that Dickson believes flows throughout the Club, form the Manager down, and he is full of superlatives for Roy Hodgson.
“He’s a legend in the game, one of the top managers, everybody knows that,” he enthuses. “His record speaks for itself and it’s a privilege for me to be here working under such a manager. Like I said, I’m very grateful to be here.”
As mentioned previously, the Nigerian international’s last season at Sunderland was curtailed by a knee injury sustained in the African Cup of Nations, but having completely recovered, the player is all the more determined to push on with his career now and make up for lost time.
“It’s fine now,” he confirms. “It’s just my fitness I need to work on, but I’m doing extra sessions at the moment to try and get fit.”
