Fitting reward for a season of hard work

Fulham will be playing European football next season and it is just what the club deserves as they have prospered under the management of Roy Hodgson. Fulham have developed from a mid-table club who had to fend off the threat of relegation each season to become one of the most efficient sides outside of the top four.

Fulham have attracted a lot of praise from every section of football this season and have created a defence, which rivals even the best in the game. Hodgson, whose appointment was one of much debate in West London when it was announced not too long ago, has created a lot of this.

What Hodgson has brought to the side is the experience that you need to steady a Premier League side that want to jump from one end of the table to the other. Before he arrived you didn’t really know which Fulham side you would be playing, the one capable of beating Manchester United 2-0 or the one capable of caving in to a good thrashing.

The point is that Hodgson brought with him a very level head. He made sure that every element of his side had big characters and that the same players were playing together all the time, keeping rotation down to a minimum. What this created was a sense of team spirit, something that can eradicate the quality of any opposition on any single occasion.

Now this has been set up and is part of the club, Fulham can move on to bigger things and bigger adventures. The chants echoing around Craven Cottage of ‘we’re all going on a European tour’ have not been heard for a very long time and the efficiency that Hodgson has drilled into his team is the main reason for this.

The club now looks very business like, limitations and possibilities are both equally considered with every decision that the football club makes. A strong discipline regime makes sure that none of the players step out of line and if the whole improving attitude continues then Fulham could start pushing the boundaries of what they can do domestically as well as on the European front.

Efficiency is everything in the game of football. Fulham do not play the prettiest game by a long way but they play to their strengths, which Hodgson has helped them develop. The spine of the side from the defence, down the middle to the front men is strong and this often makes the team resilient when they have to take a lot of pressure playing the bigger sides in the Premier League.

Hodgson has given back some confidence to one or two players that previously didn’t really have any and he has utilised the team’s best players and made sure that they are all playing their hearts out for the white shirt every single time they walk onto the pitch.

Fulham would do well to keep Hodgson in place for a very long time. He is arguably their best manager over the last few seasons and he doesn’t look like he will be swayed by an offer from anywhere else any time soon.