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Sitting in seventh position with just four games remaining of the 2008/09 season, Fulham are aiming to record the Club’s highest ever league finish.
Last weekend’s victory over Stoke City, combined with West Ham United’s defeat at the hands of Chelsea, put the Whites two points clear of West Ham and three clear of Manchester City and Tottenham.
With the European qualification also a possibility, Manager Roy Hodgson stressed the need to not get carried away by expectations.
“People can get their heads turned by expectations,” he said. “I’m not so certain that I would because I’ve been football a long time and I’ve seen both sides of the coin.
"When we started this season our goal was a very clear and simple one; to play as well as we did at the end of last season, to be very consistent in our performances and to make certain that we kept our place in the league without the trauma we suffered during last year.
“Fortunately, apart from a spell where we had a blip of three defeats, we’ve not been in a position to worry too much about relegation. As a result the players have been freer to express themselves.”
The Manager was keen to point out that regardless of previous achievements, the top priority every season will be first maintaining the Club’s league status.
“It would worry me if the expectations started to get too high because there are four teams in this league who, every year, don’t even entertain the thought of relegation,” he said. “There are 16 where the thought of relegation is not too far from their mind.
“I’ll give Everton as a great example. They’re having a fantastic year this year, but not so long ago they were struggling against relegation – that’s how the league is. So first and foremost for me at Fulham, I shall be really happy all the time we’re playing the football that we’re playing at the moment and we’re staying in the league.
“If it led to something better, i.e. Europe, great – I’d be delighted. But we’d have to watch out. We’d have to be careful to manage the expectations and we’d have to be careful before we start suddenly throwing money to make the squad much bigger because I don’t think we can handle that. What we’re doing and what we’ve got is what we can handle.”
