Lasse Vigen Christensen was delighted to make his return to first team action for Fulham on Saturday – and hopes to build on the lively substitute appearance that helped Slavisa Jokanovic’s side secure a third successive win over Cardiff City.
The Danish under-21 international has been missing since February after limping off during the early stages of Fulham’s memorable victory at Queens Park Rangers with a hamstring strain and Christensen was conscious of not rushing back too quickly. He was introduced as a second half replacement for Ryan Tunnicliffe and helped create the winning goal for birthday Emerson Hyndman in stoppage time.
It feels great to be back. Every time you get a setback like that you’re waiting for the moment when you can return. This time it’s taken quite a while, but I think I waited the right length of time.
I’m hopefully getting to a new place now physically where I can stay injury free, because that’s the thing I need to do, to get back to consistently playing and consistently playing well. I need a little bit more time without injuries and those stop-start periods, which it’s been for nearly 18 months now.
So, for me, it was really positive to come back in and feel like I can make a difference and help the team on my first game back. I’m just crossing my fingers that it will keep going like this.
He was typically modest about his part in Hyndman’s winner – which was certainly not to be sniffed at.
It came out from a corner and Rohan [Ince] collected it. I had someone on me and I kind of just committed him a bit with the touch, and he did well not to give away a penalty, but it nearly went out so I thought I’ll get it back into play.
Next thing I knew I was in the boards and when I looked up I saw it was in the goal. It all happened very quickly but it was a great feeling for all the lads.
It feels great to get a late winner like that. It’s a game that could have really gone either way, so it’s really nice that for once it was us who got that chance and put it away.
I thought Cardiff pinned us in quite well in the first half. We didn’t really get out and didn’t really start playing and have the good spells that we normally have. Second half it opened up a little bit and we started passing a bit more and were more positive.
Especially with Ryan [Fredericks] on, it gave us a different outlet in behind and we made good use of that to get up the pitch and win some corners and pin them in a little bit. It was really good, a few results went our way as well, and it was just a really, really good time for Emerson to pop up and get his first goal on his birthday.
