Alfie Mawson looking to Swansea survival fight to save Fulham's season

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James Benge16 December 2018

Alfie Mawson is looking to his past experience of avoiding the drop and slipping out of the Premier League with Swansea as Fulham look to extricate themselves from a dire situation.

A timid 2-0 defeat at home to West Ham on Saturday left the Cottagers three points from safety with 42 goals against their name after only 17 games of a Premier League season that has unquestionably failed to live up to expectations.

Those were only heightened by a £100million spending spree in the summer that is looking more like a trolley dash by the game. Former Swansea defender Mawson is certainly struggling to justify his own price tag, and was guilty of ball-watching when Javier Hernandez flicked on Felipe Anderson’s cross for Michail Antonio to score West Ham’s decisive second.

But Mawson is hoping to be an influential figure in the dressing room having been part of the Swansea side that lifted themselves out of the mire in the final weeks of the 2016-17 season, only to slip out of the top flight 12 months later.

“I said to them after the game that I know what it like to be in this position and I know what it is like to get out; I know what it's like to go down as well and I know there are certain things that we can do to keep ourselves up in this division,” Mawson said.

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“So I will give all the advice I can, especially to the younger players and we will feed off the older players. We need to stick together with the gaffer and we will be fine.

“We had a lot of chances, on another day we'd have been 3-0 up but that's how it goes when you're at the bottom but like I said, I've been here before and sometimes it's like that saying, get kicked when you're down but you can't feel sorry for yourselves.

“We have got the best job in the world, we have got to thrive off these situations as much as we can because we are grateful to be in the Premier League and we have to stay there.”

The festive fixture list at least offers Fulham the chance to ease their burden, with Newcastle, Wolves and Huddersfield all opponents that Claudio Ranieri would expect to at least get points from - and perhaps even keep a first clean sheet of the season.

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Mawson added: “We need to [get points quickly]. Today we said before the game today that we needed something out of it but unfortunately, we can't change what has happened now, it is done.

“All we can do is attack this week, we have got a massive Christmas period, a few home games and against teams around us and we need to take charge of that and get points on the board, end of.”

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