Tom Cairney feels that Fulham’s resilience, goalscoring record and outstanding away form means that they will travel to Reading for tomorrow night’s pivotal play-off semi-final second leg in confident mood.
The Fulham captain, who scored the second half header that levelled the tie on Saturday, told GetWestLondon that he believes his team can deliver a winning performance at the Madjeski Stadium on Tuesday, despite Reading’s almost unsurpassable home record this season. Cairney also believes that Slavisa Jokanovic’s side’s resilience could be a crucial quality in what may turn out to be another tight affair.
We’ve won a lot of points from losing positions this season and we’re quite high in the league for that and I always believe that we’ll create chances and that we’ll score goals. I think it will be just as tight on Tuesday but hopefully we can hit the back of the net.
I think our away form has been brilliant all season and we’ll go there full of confidence and maybe they’ll come out more, especially at home, but they’ll be a threat going forward and we need to be solid at the back so it could be end-to-end like it was a little bit in the second half.
We have to do what we’ve done all season and what has got us into this position – we got to dominate the ball from the start even though that was very tough [on Saturday] and create chances. It may give us more room so we can attack a bit more but we don’t know yet and it depends how they set up. It was really cagey first 20 minutes and you could see from the way they set up we cancelled each other out a little bit but there is a hell of a lot on the line so it’s to be expected.
Cairney also restated his confidence in the quality that Jokanovic has at his disposal – and is revelling in the opportunity to show what Fulham can do in these crucial contests.
There’s a lot of ability in that dressing room and we’re the highest scorers in the league for a reason and we believe we can outscore teams, especially over two legs and then it’s a bit of a lottery in the final.
