Stefan Johansen has urged his Fulham team-mates to put right their wretched home record with a commanding performance against bottom of the table Bolton Wanderers tomorrow afternoon.
The Norwegian midfielder scored in Fulham’s only home league win of the season – against Hull City back in September – and admitted that the Whites’ displays in front of their own fans have not been good enough this term. Following last weekend’s demoralising defeat to Aston Villa, Johansen – a regular source of goals from midfield so far this season – wants to return Craven Cottage to the kind of fortress that helped Fulham sustain thirteen years in the top flight not so long ago.
The former Celtic midfielder told FulhamFCTV:
It’s important, now we have two home games in a row and there are three games before the international break and we did well before the last one and we’re aiming to do the same. I think we’re always going to be favourites at home against anyone in this league so that’s the pressure we have to deal with but we need to start performing better at the Cottage because it’s not been good enough, but we know what we’re capable of.
Johansen is aware that sides now have the benefit of having studied the tapes of the way Fulham finished last season, but isn’t willing to make excuses for a poor start at the Cottage this term:
Teams know us better now – they try to make it very hard for us and I think most teams, when they come here, are happy with a point so it’s hard when they defend with ten players behind the ball but it’s up to us to put the tempo on the ball to break that down, which we haven’t done well with this year but it’s time to start.
The club has been struggling over the past three or four years, we had a good year last year and they know we can play good football now and we just need to focus on ourselves and what we’re going to do, because we’re confident if we do what we can do good enough we’ll win the game.
