Ryan Fredericks felt Fulham were full value for their FA Cup progression after a dominant display in their third round FA Cup tie in Cardiff on Sunday morning.
The Fulham right back was utilised as a marauding wing-back after Slavisa Jokanovic switched to a 5-3-2 formation and absolutely terrorised Joe Bennett, creating both the goals as the Londoners recovered from conceding an early goal to set up a fourth round tie at home to Premier League Hull City. Fredericks told Fulham’s official website that the squad were very pleased with their performance after fielding a nearly full-strength side:
We dominated for 90 minutes, and that’s what we wanted. We played pretty much a full strength team, only made three changes, so we’re happy.
Fredericks believes Fulham are slowly beginning to implement Jokanovic’s possession-based footballing philosophy and feels the Whites can sustain a serious promotion tilt should they add the finishing touches in the final third.
The last ten to fifteen games now we’ve been playing in a certain way with plenty of ball possession, and it’s paying off. We’re dominating every game we play, and once we become a little bit more clinical in both boxes, we’ll be in a good place.
We know we’re going to dominate pretty much every time we play and that we’re going to have chances. We had a lot of opportunities on Sunday and should have made the result a bit more convincing than it was. We never panic if we go 1-0 down because we know we’re good enough to get goals, as we did in Cardiff.
The former Tottenham and Bristol City full-back was one of the major beneficiaries of Jokanovic’s decision to employ wing-backs with him and teenage defender Ryan Sessegnon flying forward to great effect.
The gaffer went with wing-backs, which isn’t too dissimilar to how we play normally. Even when I play right-back we have so much of the ball that I get plenty of chances to go forward. He gave me licence just to keep bombing on and told me to get at the full-back every time I got on the ball. That’s what I did, and it paid off.
Fredericks insisted that the squad’s focus had switched back to their Championship position after the final whistle in Cardiff and that his team-mates are looking forward to returning to league action against Barnsley at the weekend.
It’s back to business now. The FA Cup game’s over with and we’re looking forward to Barnsley. They’re a decent team who are up where we are, so we need to push on and work our way into the play-offs, so it’s a big game for us on Saturday.
