Scott Parker believes Fulham’s battling victory at Birmingham on Saturday could be the spark that ignites their season and he has called on his team-mates to follow up their first league win with three more points against Bolton on Wednesday.
The Fulham captain was encouraged by his side’s resilience as they fought back from a goal down to move off the bottom of the Championship table thanks to goals from Tim Hoogland and Hugo Rodallega at St. Andrew’s. The relief at a first win in nine games was tangible.
It’s a very important win, obviously. We’ve been searching for this win for some time now so it’s often been quite disappointing on a Saturday. I didn’t think we played very well in the first half but then we showed a lot of character in the second half. When we went 2-1 up we always felt we were going to see out the game.
I think when you get to this point, it was always about the result, that’s the key thing. We’ve got our first win away from home and we’ve got another game coming up really quick so we’we’ve got to try and get back-to-back wins so we can start pushing up the table.
The 33 year-old is expecting a tough battle when Bolton, another of the early season strugglers, come to Craven Cottage in midweek.
You look at Bolton’s side and the players they’ve got – they’re a good side on paper. They’ve got some good players so it’ll be another tough game – although in this league I think we’ve all come to realise there are no easy games – but we’re looking forward to it.
We said at the start of the season that we have got a very young squad. Even the boys who aren’t young have never played in this league, but I’m certainly seeing massive improvements and I think the lads are slowly getting to realise what this league’s all about, and what some of the main ingredients you need are.
Technically, I think we’re probably one of the best teams in the league but there’s the other side to the game, especially in the Championship, which you need, and certainly on Saturday in the second half we showed that. It was a massive win and the changing room was bouncing – obviously we haven’t had a win all season so it was very pleasing. Hopefully now we can go into the Bolton game and win again.
