How Relieved Did Hangeland Look At The Final Whistle

[White Noise]

The Right Result

Thursday 4th February 2010

Fulham FC News


Brede Hangeland summed up the general mood at Craven Cottage on Wednesday as one of relief as the Whites put a winless streak of six league games behind them with a 1-0 victory over Portsmouth.

It was by no means the most convincing victory of the season for Roy Hodgson's side, but as the Norwegian defender, who more than played his part in keeping a clean sheet despite an, at times, determined Pompey onslaught pointed out, a positive result was the top priority in order to restore confidence.

"I didn't think we played very well," he admitted. "But it was about getting a result and putting this bad spell behind us, and we did that, so we're very happy.

"It's been a tough time because we've had a lot of injury problems. We've actually played quite well in a few of the games, but we haven't had anything at all to show for it. Tonight we didn't play so well, but got the points, and that's what we'd been waiting quite a while for, so in that respect it was really pleasing."

With the squad decimated by even more injuries to the likes of Simon Davies and Zoltan Gera this week, there was at least some encouragement to be gained from the introduction of two new faces, Nicky Shorey, who played the whole game at left-back, and Stefano Okaka Chuka, who made his presence felt for 69 minutes up-front. And Brede was impressed by the impact of the two new acquisitions.

"I thought they did really well," he assessed. "It's always hard to come into a new team and we'd barely met them before they came in and played a game with us, so especially having had that short a time to get to know each other, I thought they both did really well, and they look like good additions to the team and squad."

Having picked up their first Premier League win since the defeat of Manchester United in December, the next challenge for Brede and his team-mates is to put the recent away match jinx behind them this Saturday when they travel to Bolton Wanderers. But despite the Trotters' lowly league position and adjustment to life under new manager Owen Coyle, the defender says there's no good time to travel to the notoriously tricky Reebok Stadium.

"This result is what we needed going into that game, because it's always better to play with confidence on the back of a win, plus we won at Bolton last year, so we'll be going there trying to do that again.
"But it's always going to be difficult going there, regardless of whether they've had a change of manager or not. All that matters is that it's our next game so now we must get ready for that."


Read more: http://www.fulhamfc.com/Club/News/NewsArticles/2010/February/bredeonPompey.aspx#ixzz0eYtzUuFU

[finnster01]

Probably not as relieved as I did