Aaron Hughes described Fulham’s 5-0 dismantling of Wolves this afternoon as ‘arguably the performance of the season’.
The Northern Ireland international, who played at right back in the absence of both Chris Baird and Stephen Kelly today, also stressed the importance of Martin Jol’s side building momentum with the thrashing of Terry Connor’s side representing their third straight league win, the first time Fulham have put together such a run in four years.
You have to be very happy with a 5-0 win and to be honest it was a day where we didn’t do too many things wrong. We controlled the tempo of the game throughout, while our movement and passing was superb. It goes without saying that we are all delighted by the result and we’re on a really good run at the moment. The defeat of Wolves comes on the back of wins against Stoke and QPR, but today was arguably the performance of the season – I thought we were fantastic.
It’s good that those up top are banging them in. Pavel and Clint took their goals superbly and it was great to see. We know that we’re very capable of doing that and it clicked today. We caused Wolves a lot of problems and could well have scored even more.
Pavel was devastating and he’s taken very well to English football, to be honest, I don’t think anyone could have predicted the start he has made. On another day Clint could well have had a hat-trick too, he’s already got two hat-tricks this season and as we all know, he’s having a great season.
When you have players like them, as well as the likes of Duffer, Danny, AJ and Mousa in front of you, then it makes our lives as defenders that bit easier. But obviously we were pleased to keep another clean sheet and we kept things very tight. They’re there to put them in, but we’re there to keep them out – so all around it was a pleasing afternoon.
Attention now turns to Saturday’s trip to Aston Villa, one of Hughes’ former clubs.
We talked about the importance of getting a third straight win and I can’t stress enough just what a difference momentum can make in this game. We have a tough game against Aston Villa up next, but we did well against QPR away from home last weekend so hopefully we can build on that form on the road.
We know that our form at home is strong, but with the quality that we have and with the way we are currently playing then we have a good chance. It’s an opportunity for us not just to take three points, but an opportunity to put ourselves in a great position.