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Roy Hodgson and Alex McLeish join in Zamora praise

last updated Sunday 21st February 2010, 8:50 PM
Fulham manager Roy Hodgson
Fulham manager Roy Hodgson
     
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Fulham boss Roy Hodgson stopped short of recommending Zamora to Capello but is certain the Italian will have left Craven Cottage with a high opinion of the in-form 29-year-old. "I think Capello will have been impressed. I know the fans were chanting his name for England and that was quite right,'' said Hodgson.

"Capello knows football very well and is a person I regard as a friend. I've got every faith in his judgement. If he believes Bobby can do a job for him he'll pick him. I'm sure that being the good judge of a player that he is, he'll have gone away realising that in Bobby Fulham have a good player.''

Zamora, who almost joined Hull in the summer, has been a revelation since being taunted by his own fans in December and Hodgson is delighted by the impact he is having. "Zamora was very good throughout today,'' said Hodgson.

"He's performing like a true target playing centre forward who brings his team-mates into the game and holds the ball up very well. But because he's skilful he also scores goals. Last year he did all of the things we wanted him to do but wasn't lucky, but this year he's added the goals to his good play.

"That's fortunate because Andy Johnson has not been available. Last year when people were criticising Bobby for not scoring goals, I had to balance that out. I couldn't argue because he wasn't scoring enough goals, but he was doing a lot of other very good things that we needed him to do for the team.''

"I thought that was a remarkable victory, I really did,'' said Hodgson. "We won the game with two wonder strikes. Not only did we win, we won with two great goals that we might see in one of those goal-of-the-month competitions.''

Alex McLeish joined the clamour for Bobby Zamora to gain England recognition after watching him inspire Fulham to a 2-1 Barclays Premier League victory over Birmingham.

"Bobby Zamora was a thorn all afternoon - he caused us a lot of problems,'' said the Blues manager. "I think Zamora was the difference. If Fabio Capello is looking for a certain type of forward then Zamora is as good as anyone I've seen at keeping that ball up. Like Emile Heskey he's guy who can bring other players into play and help other people prosper without maybe being prolific.''







































































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