A rare weekend without football will be followed by a trip to Goodison Park on Saturday for Mark Hughes' Team and their loyal followers. Whilst an extended break between fixtures has allowed Hughes' players to fully recover from their winning exploits against Blackburn Rovers, defender Brede Hangeland would clearly prefer to have been playing back-to-back matches.
“Obviously we would have preferred to have been playing in the FA Cup last weekend, but as things were, it was nice to have a weekend off," Brede told fulhamfc.com. “I think it was the first time in my time at the Club.
“It’s good in the sense that we recover fully but we want to be playing as many games as last year because it means you’re in a lot of competitions, but hopefully this break will enable us to be fully fit for the League games and do well."
Hangeland could be up against former Fulham striker Louis Saha on Saturday evening and the Norwegian international is clearly looking forward to playing at Goodison Park, where Fulham will be hoping to build on some impressive away performances in recent seasons.
“He’s [Saha] a good player but then again there’s always a good striker on the opposition team when you play in the Premier League so we’ll be doing our best as always and we’ll see what happens.
Goodison Park is a great place to go and play and there’s always a good atmosphere. We’ve been quite close to winning a game up there in recent years so hopefully we can do that on Saturday.
“I don’t really look at the League table that much but we know it’s very tight and any points we can get in the bank on Saturday will help us a lot.”