It doesn’t look like Bobby Zamora’s injury at Stoke last night will persuade Roy Hodgson to sign a big-money replacement in the transfer window.
The Fulham manager says his January spending will be careful and considered, despite Zamora’s suspected dislocated shoulder in last night’s defeat at the Britannia Stadium.
Like most other clubs we’re not looking to go into a situation where we splash a lot of money around. We’ll be keeping a close eye on what is available and if something comes up at the right price that could help us out, we’ll be interested.
But there is a lot of big ifs involved in that and I would say we will be very conservative in the transfer market. This is expensive for us because not only have we lost the game but we’ve sustained injuries to two players who have been so important to us this season and the last. Bobby Zamora either has a dislocated shoulder or collar bone injury.
It’s certainly not a short-term injury and I can only hope that the prognosis is not too bad. Either way it’s a bad injury for us and we were forced to replace Hangeland at half-time. We’re certainly not being fortunate on the injury front this season.
Hodgson was pleased with a vastly improved second half showing last night, but bemoaned the defensive lapses that allowed Stoke to score three without reply before the break.
The players gave it a good go in the second half to make sure that the game ended in a dignified way. I’m disappointed that the game didn’t last another 10 minutes because you never know, we could have sneaked it.
But we conceded some disastrous goals from set plays in the first half and I was particularly displeased with the second goal because I can’t see why the free-kick came about. To concede three goals in any league is a deficit that is difficult to get back from but at least we managed to show some character.
Stoke decided to out muscle Fulham from the start, & with BH not really fit enough to play, Kelly not being strong enough in any way, Hughes & Baird being brushed aside – it was a disaster from the start.
A number of people have highlighted the fact that Paul Konchesky, gave away the free kick from which they scored a goal. It was way out wide, & should have been defended far better than it was, how many free kickes from that position lead directly to a goal. All the goals were scored , or were worked from the right of our defence. The first two were scored by our right hand post, & the only goal they scored from open play, came from down our right hand side.