Fulham boss Chris Coleman admits he is revelling in the selection dilemma posed by Saturday’s Barclays Premiership clash with Portsmouth.
The January arrival of Alexey Smertin, Simon Davies, Clint Dempsey and Vincenzo Montella has strengthened the squad significantly and with virtually everyone fit, Coleman has some tricky decisions to make.
“We’ve always been used to having a small squad. Now that we have a bigger one it might upset the balance a little bit,” he said.
“Possibly it’s upset the balance already because we’ve got such big numbers now. Now I have to deal with all the players who are out of the team and are unhappy.
“But we can only pick 11 and five subs so some people will be disappointed. I prefer it being like that than going into games bare, like we have been doing sometimes.
“But just because we’ve signed four new players it doesn’t mean we can drop down a gear, we have to keep pushing and progressing.
“This is such an important time for us. We’ve got eight games left so it’s massive.”
Coleman has been pleased with the way the new arrivals have settled at Craven Cottage, although the red card picked up by Montella against Tottenham in February has proved frustrating.
“When clubs get players in it takes time for them to settle. We already know the quality of Simon Davis and Alexey Smertin,” he said.
“Vincenzo has been a stop-start because of his sending-off. We had to bring Vincenzo in and get him match-fit ourselves because he’d missed out on an awful lot of games through injury.
“Then he was sent off so, he’s missed the last four or five weeks. That meant he had start again because he couldn’t play in the reserves either, so that was disappointing. But we know about his quality.
“It was always going to be harder for Clint to get to grips with it but he will do and will play a big part for us.”
