Timothy Castagne has been pleased with the start of his Fulham career but is desperate to ‘achieve something’ with his new club in the second half of the season.
The Belgian international has impressed when deputising for both Antonee Robinson and Kenny Tete in the first team since signing from Leicester City towards the end of the summer transfer window – having watched Fulham as a fan at Craven Cottage when he was a teenager.
Castagne told the club’s official website that he has settled in well with the Whites:
“I think it’s been pretty good. I’ve managed to play a lot of games so it’s good. The staff have been great, the players have been great, and also life here is a lot better than in Leicester obviously because it’s London. So it’s been good.”
The full back underlined just how important Marco Silva’s influence was in both securing his signature and then integrating him into the first-team squad.
“I spoke with the manager in the middle of the transfer window. I liked what he did and what he said, and from then it was a bit of a waiting game but I was waiting to come here. I don’t regret that. He has been great. He’s always pushing you and he has great ideas, so I really like what I’ve seen so far.”
The determined defender has plenty of ambitions for the remainder of the season – and doesn’t share any concept of Fulham’s campaign petering out.
“I want to continue to play well here and try to achieve something. If it’s a cup or a European place, I don’t care, but it would be nice to get something. I think if you look at the table, we’re not that far. You just have to get a few results in a row, especially to get out of the red zone, but if we can string a few good games together, we can definitely look for the top ten.”
Castagne is targeting a return to winning ways against Wolverhampton Wanderers on Monday night.
“It’s very important, we know that, but we try not to put too much pressure on ourselves. We know we had some games where we did well but maybe the result slipped away at the end, but we know we have to do better. It’s not like we’re playing very badly. We’ve just been a bit unfortunate, maybe through a lack of experience or maybe through small mistakes that can happen. We know it’s not too far.
It’s not just about the strikers needing to score or the defenders needing to defend. We have to do everything as a team. We definitely need to score more goals, but we need better deliveries, we need better starts to games, we need better everything to score. And then defensively, we’ve had some mistakes so we need to clean those and then it’s going to be better.”
We definitely need to start much quicker in the first half and put pressure on the opposition, the match is 90 minutes not 45 so we need to get out of the blocks much quicker and try to score.