David Elm hopes to do enough to persuade Roy Hodgson to offer him a new contract at Fulham this summer.

The Swedish striker was given a one-year deal after his surprise arrival from Kalmar at the end of the summer transfer window. Elm’s first-team chances have been limited – and he could be pushed further down the pecking order by the arrival of Stefano Okaka – but he looked impressive as a substitute at Accrington in the FA Cup and in Fulham’s recent league defeats by Tottenham and Aston Villa. Indeed, he was only denied his first goal for the club by a tight offside call on Saturday.

Yes, obviously it’s harder if you don’t play, but I keep working hard and when I get my chance, I’ll try to take it. My only target is just to be patient.

I don’t think I expected to play more before now because it’s taken me these couple of months to settle down.T here’s a big difference between Swedish football and English football and I had to take a few months just to adjust to the tempo and pace and now I’m starting to get hold of it, I think.

Hopefully now I will play a little bit more, but there’s many good players, so it’s tough. I knew that when I signed.

It was maybe a possibility to go out on loan, but I don’t think it’s been discussed. It’s good for me to be here training with those guys. They are good players and I feel that I’m developing all the time and I can still learn more.

They have all played a lot more years at this level than I have, so I try to talk to them and learn from them. I think Zamora’s a very good player. We are kind of similar in certain ways.

Elm strikes me as someone who could be a very useful option for us and a refreshingly candid footballer who’s trying to make it in a foreign land. Let’s hope he does. He may yet get more chances given the number of injuries afflicting our strikers at the moment.