The Tony Gale Column

What a fantastic result for Fulham at Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday! I’ve got a lot of mates who are Spurs fans and they probably thought it would be an easy game, but it didn’t turn out that way.

It was a great team goal to win it. Sascha Riether was involved again and the quicker we get him signed up the better. He’s been one of the best right-backs in the league this season, without a doubt.

We managed to keep Gareth Bale quiet as well, which isn’t easy. He does tend to wander and it was a collective effort to stop the Welshman from doing his thing. It certainly wasn’t a fluke result. Okay, Spurs had chances and Mark Schwarzer made some good saves, but it wasn’t a lucky result for Fulham as we played very well.

I think we played Spurs at the right time. They’d played two games against Inter Milan and one against Liverpool, whereas we’d only had one match in March before Sunday, so we were fresh. Sometimes the fixtures just fall in your favour.

We’ve kept three clean sheets now in our last four games and we’re getting back to being hard to beat. Over recent years, we’ve been renowned for our organisation but we’ve been a bit loose this season so the clean sheets have been very welcome.

It’s great to take a win into the international break. If you’ve lost, you can stew and think about it for a couple of weeks. But the lads can go off pleased with themselves and the ones who aren’t travelling might be rewarded with a couple of days off.

Ashkan Dejagah was involved in the build-up to the goal at Spurs and he seems to be finding his feet in the Barclays Premier League. He’s been in good form in the last few games but I think he still needs to learn when to pass it and when to run with the ball. When you’re playing wide and you don’t see a lot of the ball, when you do get it you can sometimes try and do too much. Likewise, if you are seeing a lot of the ball, sometimes you try and get rid of it too early. So while he’s improving, there’s still scope for him to get even better.

We’ve got to be bang up for the game with Queens Park Rangers on Easter Monday. The lads owe us after the 2-1 defeat at Loftus Road in December, a game I was at. Martin Jol apologised to the fans afterwards and so he should have done as it was one of the poorest Fulham performances in a London derby I’ve seen for many a year. The players didn’t seem to realise what it meant to the fans and the Fulham supporters deserve to see a better display this time around.

Rangers are fighting for their lives at the foot of the table. They’ve got it all to do to stay up and I can’t see them winning if we play anything like we did at Spurs.

We’re the better team without a shadow of a doubt but QPR beat us well at their place and Adel Taarabt was the danger man, scoring both their goals. Since then, he’s fallen out of favour a little bit, with Harry Redknapp opting to play Loic Remy and Bobby Zamora up front. I don’t think QPR will stay up, though, and I also think we’ll beat them at the Cottage to edge them that bit closer to relegation.