David Stockdale felt Fulham’s victory over Bolton this afternoon was the ‘perfect response’ to their abject elimination from the Europa League in midweek.
Goals from Clint Dempsey and Bryan Ruiz lifted the Whites upto eleventh and the professional performance stood in sharp contrast to Wednesday night’s capitulation from a winning position against Odense.
Today was a fantastic win for us, and the perfect response to the disappointment in midweek. We needed to turn it around a little bit and we did just that.
At 2-0, I think a few possibly thought back to the Odense game, but we kept things tight and showed a lot of character. From front to back there were some great performances. When they play like that it makes my job that bit more easier. The boys up front will be happy with their goals, but us at the back will be equally pleased with the clean sheet too – all round we were very strong.
Stockdale called on his team-mates to take heart from this showing, especially with a tough run of fixtures over the festive period with the Whites facing Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal in the coming weeks.
It will be difficult because Manchester United are up next. But there are a lot of positives to be taken. We can build on this performance now. We knew the league was tight and three points makes tonight’s table look a lot better.
Make no mistake, this was a massive win for us and now we just want to kick on. We’ve done well against United in the past, so hopefully that will be the case again.
Stockdale, who was recalled from his loan at Ipswich after Mark Schwarzer suffered a spinal injury at Swansea last week, was delighted to be back in the first team.
It’s good to be back and playing at Craven Cottage again. I like to think that I showed what I could do last season and hopefully I can do well in Mark’s absence.
I enjoyed my time at Ipswich and it was great to see that they won today too – so it was a good day all round. I’m sure I’ll get a few texts off the lads there saying that they don’t need me! I love it at Fulham and I just want to repay the faith that they have shown in me.
