Fulham defender Carlos Bocanegra hopes Moritz Volz makes a speedy recovery from injury so he can return to his preferred position in the centre of defence.
Volz sustained a fractured rib during the goalless draw with West Brom on Saturday, forcing boss Chris Coleman to switch Bocanegra to full-back and bring on Zat Knight.
But USA international Bocanegra, who spent the first 18 months of his Fulham career at left-back, is keen to return to the centre of defence in order to press his World Cup claims.
“I’ve been really enjoying playing in the middle. With the World Cup approaching it’s good for me to be playing in my natural position,” he said.
“But when we changed things around after Moritz went off, we didn’t really have anyone else who could go out there so I was happy to do it.
“Tomasz Radzinski was in front of me and we played together quite a bit last year so it was pretty comfortable.
“But hopefully Moritz will get healthy soon so that I can stay in the middle – it’s way less running than on the left!”
Fulham’s position in the Barclays Premiership has suffered because of sloppy defending so Bocanegra was delighted with the club’s first away clean sheet of the season against West Brom.
“We were happy to get the clean sheet. We’ve been talking about it for a while now – and we know we’ve been having a tough time getting one, even at home,” he said.
“It was an ugly game but we didn’t concede and we got a point which was good.”
