Saturday, September 26, 2009

Schwarzer Ready For Action

as seen on au.fourfourtwo.com

Socceroos shot-stopper Mark Schwarzer is back from a recent neck injury and ready to take his place in the Fulham side to face Arsenal in the Premier League on Saturday.

The 36-year-old custodian, who played every league game last season for Fulham, missed the Cottagers' recent matches against Everton and CSKA Sofia with the neck problem and was also absent midweek in the Carling Cup defeat to Manchester City.

But the Socceroo is certain to be back in goals for when the Cottagers play host to fellow Londoners Arsenal on Saturday evening.

Fulham defeated the Gunners 1-0 in this league fixture last season and despite a slow start to this campaign, Schwarzer is hoping for a similar result.

Schwarzer told the London Informer, "Whenever you play the likes of Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool, people write you off before the game even begins, so the expectation to do better than that is more in the dressing-room than outside in the football world.

"You can't rely on those games against the so-called big four to get points, that's for sure, but we as a team believe, especially at home, we can be competitive and get points against any side."

But Fulham were poor in the league last week beaten 2-1 by newly promoted Wolverhampton and subsequently questions have been raised about the Cottagers ability to reproduce last season's heroics.

Schwarzer added about the Wolves game, "We weren't good the first 50-60 minutes. To Wolves' credit they put us under a lot of pressure and were very effective at their own game and I think we failed to cope with it for long periods of the match.

"We've had lots of games so far this season and haven't spent a lot of time on the training pitch.

"So now we must get back to basics and work on our overall defending as a team. With Arsenal coming up we haven't got a lot of time to improve but we need to."

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