Harrison Reed is confident that Fulham can beat the drop and believes the squad’s ‘huge belief’ will be a huge factor in taking them to safety.
The on-loan Southampton midfielder saluted Scott Parker’s man management as pivotal in retaining Fulham’s belief following a different start to the season. Speaking to Talksport, Reed was adamant that the Whites are heading into every game looking to pick up three points, regardless of the opponent.
“We have huge belief in our ability and in each other. Listen, we go into every game and the main focus is to win the game. It’s not to be just competitive, but to go and get three points. Everyone we work on every week – and we have done for two seasons with this manager – we try to put into the game and being solid and doing the basics really well give us a platform to go on and take points.
Reed feels that Fulham have adapted their style of play after going six league games without a win having returned to the top flight.
“The way we go about the game has probably changed a little bit from the start of the season. Of course, we want to try and play an attractive style of football but I feel like we’ve found a really good balance now of when to play our stuff, when to be no nonsense and manage the game a little bit. I think that’s a big part of why we are getting results now.
It was a tough start to the season and people wrote us off, but that gave us a lot of motivation. From day one, the manager spoke about the season and how we are going to be successful and focusing on our ourselves and truly believing that we belong here. I think that’s been throughout the whole season – maybe the results haven’t shown that, but we feel like we’ve been in a lot of games and maybe on the wrong sides of a bit of luck here and there. We’ve sort of found our feet and we’ve grown massively as a team now.”
The 26 year-old, tipped as a possible contender for Gareth Southgate’s England squad after his composed displays at the heart of the Fulham midfield, praised Parker’s ability to keep his squad believing even as the gap between the Whites and safety grew over the winter.
“A lot of credit goes to the manager there, because he’s got to be sitting at home and thinking the same as us at points of the season. He reads the mood in the camp very, very well. If he ever probably gets a little sniff that that mood’s changing or we need a little bit of a pick up, I think he done that this season. He just reminded us that it is so possible to do it. I think there was a time when we were ten points behind Newcastle and Brighton and we had a run of games. We set targets. We hit them and we pulled them both back in.”
