Denis Odoi felt Fulham were far from their best during yesterday’s victory at Preston North End – but the Belgian defender believes the three points could make a real difference in May.
The Belgian utility man, who was outstanding at the heart of Fulham’s defence in place of Tomas Kalas once again, said that the injury-time success – which came courtesy of Aleksandar Mitrovic’s second goal of the afternoon – was sweeter than the midweek dispatching of Sheffield United at Craven Cottage. Odoi told GetWestLondon’s Ryan O’Donovan:
Yeah it was a really nice victory, it feels like a nicer victory than the one against Sheffield United. It was a very hard game so props to Preston for the way they played, it maybe wasn’t the nicest way, but it’s effective and we had a hard time. But these are really nice victories and can make the difference towards the end of the season.
Odoi admitted that Alex Neill’s side gave Fulham’s promotion credentials a thorough examination, especially during the first 45 minutes where the hosts were clearly in the ascendancy.
It wasn’t our best performance, but respect to Preston, it’s the way they played, it was hard to play against and at half time we said we weren’t playing our best game and we knew that, we need to get tight, the way they play is very intense and takes a lot physically so it’s still 0-0. They dropped their intensity a little bit and we started to play towards the end of the first half you could see we were playing a bit better so we said we needed to continue that and we played a better game.
The Fulham defender felt that the Whites’ fightback from 2-0 defeat at Craven Cottage earlier in the season – where Odoi slotted home a stoppage-time leveller -had prepared them well for this encounter and was delighted that Mitrovic’s predatory instincts finally told at the death.
We’re on a good run and everybody is confident, but that doesn’t mean that the victory will come by themselves. At the beginning of the season we had a bad run but there were some moments where we came back from 2-0 so we know it’s possible if you get behind you can still come back. When it was 1-1, we knew we just had to keep going and we said during the week the way they played is very hard for them physically so towards the end of the game there will be possibilities.
