Slavisa Jokanovic has warned his Fulham players that they will be punished for any overconfidence at Ashton Gate tomorrow night and he is expecting a tough test from Lee Johnson’s ‘aggressive, strong and fast team’.
The Whites travel to Bristol on a ten-match unbeaten run and full of confidence after Saturday’s impressive defeat of promotion rivals Aston Villa, but the Fulham head coach has not forgotten how clinically the Robins exposed his side’s frailties during a ruthless 2-0 win at Craven Cottage last October.
Promotion-chasing City might be experiencing some jitters after throwing away a 3-0 lead at home to Sunderland and surrendering a two-goal advantage at Leeds on Sunday, but Jokanovic told Fulham’s official website that his side will face a stern examination of their promotion credentials tomorrow night.
It’s a really complicated game for us. We are going to find an aggressive team, a team we were not especially successful against when we played them. They’re very strong and fast in attack, pressing with the ball, pressing after they’ve lost it. And at set-pieces we must be aware and care about small details in this game.
We have good momentum, we must trust in ourselves, we must trust we can play good football and fight to try and find our best performance. The next game is the most important one, and the next game is the Bristol City one, and we must be ready and push hard to come back with the points from Bristol.
Jokanovic professed himself delighted with the way his new-look squad approached the win over Aston Villa and reiterated that he is likely to be forced to use most of his players during the run-in.
I am really satisfied with the mentality of my squad, not only the eleven players who started the game. My experience in this competition in the past, when I got promoted one time with Watford, was that I used many players from my squad. I cannot survive three games in one week with 11 players. Now we have more options, I have important players in different lines of the team.
Our expectations are high and we expect we can repeat our good performances, we can play good games with different players. I trust that we can all together do a great job and I expect the individual quality of all these people will serve the team.
The Fulham boss also offered words of praise for the club’s supporters, with more than 1,500 fans making the journey to Ashton Gate for the rearranged fixture tomorrow night.
We must be satisfied because tomorrow we are going to have 1,500 of our away supporters. They push us many times and I am sure they are going to push us again and fight with us for the new points. They are always very important for us. At the Cottage now it’s better, the atmosphere feels different.
