On the 31st January Fulham Football Club announced the signing of Pavel Pogrebnyak who joined the Club initially until the summer of 2012.

The 28-year-old striker joined FFC from German Bundesliga side VFB Stuttgart having signed for the Club in 2009 from Zenit St Petersburg.

During his two-year spell at Zenit, Pogrebnyak scored 22 goals in 58 appearances and won both the national league in 2007 and Russian Super Cup in 2008 where he scored the winning goal in a 2-1 victory over Lokomotiv Moscow in a closely contested final.

Pogrebnyak started his career at his hometown club Spartak Moscow, progressing through the club's youth system where he joined aged 6, and made his first senior start in 2002 for Spartak.

He spent 2003, 2004 & 2005 on loan to Baltika Kaliningrad, Khimki & Shinnik Yaroslavl respectively before moving to Tom Tomsk in 2006 where his impressive performances and 13 goals in 26 appearances sparked interest from Zenit St Petersburg.

He made his international debut for Russia in friendly against Latvia in 2006 and scored the only goal of the game in a 1-0 win on his debut. An injury forced him out of the 2008 European Championships but he came back to become a regular for his national team and was part of the Russia team that topped Qualifying Group B for this summer's European Championships.

Pogrebnyak made a stunning start to life at Craven Cottage, scoring after just 16 minutes on his debut as Fulham defeated Stoke City 2-1 in SW6 on February 11 before securing a derby day victory over QPR at Loftus Road on February 25th with the coolest of finishes.

FFC's new number seven made it five goals in three games on the 4 March after scoring a sublime hat-trick at Craven Cottage during Fulham's 5-0 win over Wolves that fired the Club into eighth place in the Barclays Premier League.

This made him the quickest player to reach 5 goals in Premier League history.

Pavel returned from an ankle injury to score in a 2-1 win against Wigan Athletic at Craven Cottage On 21 April 2012

He was released by Fulham on 1 July after failing to reach terms to extend his contract claiming Fulham did not appreciate him enough.

Pogrebnyak signed up for Reading shortly on July 8th 2012 on a four-year contract, however rumours of a £65,000 a week wages were quickly denied. The deal was a 'bosman', so no fee was paid to any clubs, but a significant signing-on fee was believed to be part of the deal.

Source: Fulham FC/Wikipedia

Season	League				FA Cup				Lg Cup				Europe				Other				Total
	P	G	Y	R	P	G	Y	R	P	G	Y	R	P	G	Y	R	P	G	Y	R	P	G	Y	R
2011/2012	12	6	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	12	6	1	0

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