Aaron Hughes says Fulham will give it their best shot as they try and extend Chelsea’s poor run of winter form in the west London derby at Stamford Bridge this afternoon.

The Northern Ireland international, who could be partnered by Chris Smalling in central defence with Brede Hangeland nursing a knee injury, says confidence is high at Fulham after their recent results.

We’ve got a bit of confidence, are unbeaten in a few games, and will go there to try to play our football, try to defend well and create chances as we have been doing. Any team going to Stamford Bridge has a difficult task, but we’ll try and play our football and see what happens.

We’ll attack within reason. If you go there and try to defend for 90 minutes, you can’t do it. They’ll overrun you in the end.

You’ve got to go and try to play your own football, always cautious that they’ve got a lot of threats in the side, a lot of ability to break you down. You try to take your chances when they come along.

We know they’ve got threats from all over. Their full-backs go further upfield than their wingers sometimes and pop up with goals. But if we can get the ball down and play our football, we’re confident we can cause them problems.

We’re playing good football. Our shape’s good, our discipline’s good. We’re solid, and Bobby Zamora’s been fantastic for us in the last few games.

If you give him decent delivery and service, we know he’ll be a handful. He’s bringing guys into play, holding it up for us and the runs off him have been good. But you have to keep working hard to keep that happening.