Tim Ream has called on his Fulham team-mates to prove that they are worth a top six spot in the Championship by beating Reading at the Madjeski Stadium tonight.
The American centre back, who could deputise again for the injured Tomas Kalas in the crunch clash this evening, wants Fulham to build on their Boxing Day victory at Ipswich and lay down a marker to the rest of the league by doing the double over the Royals. Speaking to FulhamTV ahead of the trip to Berkshire, the former Bolton defender was in no doubt as to the importance of the contest coming so quickly on the heels of Boxing Day success against Ipswich:
You can’t ask for much better than what we got [at Ipswich], maybe a few goals would have been nice and a little bit more comfortable but a 2-0 away day victory at Boxing Day, it doesn’t get much better does it? For whatever reason, we haven’t put together two halves of confident football and, save for the first ten minutes of that second half where they really tried to push it a bit, we made a little tactical switch and it worked wonders. Just overall from start to finish, it was a very confident display.
We knew from the kick off that if we got on top of them, their fans would give it to them a bit and I was surprised that it started as soon as it did, but with the amount of possession we had from the very beginning it was bound to happen.
Ream knows that the 5-0 success over Reading at Craven Cottage earlier this month will have very little bearing on tonight’s fixture.
It is a completely different match. It doesn’t matter if we beat them 5-0 at our place, they obviously had a man sent off pretty early in that second half. It is an away fixture now, a complete change. They are going to come out with a little bit of revenge and we have to be prepared for that from our point of view. I don’t necessarily think we’re slipping under the radar.
We’re playing so well for large periods of every match that every team gets video clips and watches our games, so I don’t think it’s necessarily slipping under the radar. I think everyone knows that we’re right there and it is just a matter of us getting a result and the teams around us not. For whatever reasons, the teams around us are picking up results on the same weekends and match days as we are.
We’ve got Brighton and Reading in quick succession – just like the last time we played them, it’s the same this time round. Two of the top teams in the league. It’s a good benchmark. Both teams will be a good test and we have to come out and prove that we are worthy of being in the top six with those teams.
