Ruben Loftus-Cheek believes Fulham have made ‘massive, massive progress’ since the start of his loan spell at Craven Cottage – and can’t wait to get back amongst the action against Manchester United tomorrow night.
The England international had to watch the derby defeat by his parent club Chelsea from the sidelines, but feels there are plenty of positives the Whites can take from both that game and the draw with Tottenham into the meeting with Ole Gunnar Solksjaer’s side. Loftus-Cheek told FFCTV that those performances have really helped raise the confidence of the squad:
I think we did very well. Going away to Spurs is not an easy game. Going behind after starting well and them scoring a very good goal, to keep playing the way we did and go up another level in the second half, get the goal and we thought we could have gone on and won the game very comfortably. That performance was fantastic for the team as a whole and good for confidence for myself.
You want to keep the momentum going, but obviously Fulham couldn’t play me against Chelsea. But I watched them and I thought the boys were fantastic. Up to the sending off, we were doing really well, had chances to score early on. You can’t fault the boys in that game and hopefully we can carry on this form into the next game.
I want to get going, get back on the pitch and keep this momentum going with the team and with myself. I’m really looking forward to it. I don’t think we are going into these games with big teams thinking it is going to be a really difficult game. We are giving these teams a tough time – we are hard to break down and good going forward. I think we can see these games as a chance to get points. That’s just how we feel at the minute.
I think defensively we’ve made massive, massive progress. As a team, we’re so hard to break down, so hard to score against. The fans watching can see how diligent we are in our defensive work and how we work for one another as a team. I think now we need to be more clinical in front of goal. I think we can get that down and keep the defensive side, we’ll be a very difficult team to play.
Would like to see Loftus-Cheek make similar strides forward on his return to the team. Assuming Cairney is still out, he should come back in against Manchester United. I don’t think I’m alone in considering his loan spell so far pretty underwhelming, although he was much better against Spurs. Still felt he should have tucked away that chance Lookman made for him at 1-1 – but he needs to justify all the hype about him, in my view.
Totally agree with Chlo. We need RLC to justify his reputation. He is slowly improving. Let’s hope it continues.