REAM DREAM
Hungry Tim wants to make it count on pitch for Fulham
TIM REAM is in no doubt. Fulham want to earn promotion to the Premier League out on the pitch.
The Cottagers lie third in the Championship, six points behind second-placed West Brom with nine games remaining, both feet firmly planted in the play-off places if automatic promotion is beyond them.
The frustration and worry of the past 10 weeks of inactivity have been hard on everyone.
But for USA defender Ream, with most of his family 4,000 miles away across the Atlantic in St Louis, it has been even tougher.
There was a real scare when his brother Logan, training to be a nurse, had to be tested for Covid-19 after treating a patient who then tested positive. Fortunately he was negative. Clubs in the Championship are still waiting for the go-ahead after going back into training last week. But as for cancelling the season and deciding places – and with it promotion or relegation – on points per game or some other accounting method? No thanks.
Centre-half Ream, 32, won promotion to the top flight with Fulham two years ago but that lasted only one painful season. He wants another shot.
“If you had asked me four weeks ago whether I wanted to start playing again I would have been thinking, ‘Is it really worth it, with the NHS under such pressure?’,” he said. “But now things seem to have eased, we want to play. We want to be promoted and we want to do it the right way. A lot of clubs feel the same way.
“It is so tight in this division. You can look from third place down to 10th, with nine games to go, a lot of teams feel they can get there. We want this.
“I can understand why it is so difficult to work things out. There are so many factors.
“But do we want the season to be ended just like that? The top two teams would end up where they are now? You have to take account of the human element.You can’t ignore that.
“We’ve talked about playing behind closed doors. You don’t want that – it will feel like a preseason game. You will have to tell your mind, ‘This is serious, this is the real thing’.
“There are going to be lots of games in an incredibly tight period of time. We have to play Brentford, Leeds, Forest, Cardiff and West Brom – all of them up there. But we knew that.
“Everything could change over those nine games. It’s going to depend on how fit everyone is, how sharp they are.”
Fulham had two players test positive in the second round of testing and another after the third, which to Ream shows how difficult it is.
“You can take every precaution, but people have to get groceries. You can pick it up just by being in someone’s slipstream. But we’re being tested regularly. It’s as safe as it can be,” he said.
With three kids and three dogs, it has been full-on during lockdown.
But a bonus is that Ream is helping to teach his six-year-old to play the piano.
So is he picking it up? “Chopsticks?,” said Ream. “Not quite there yet.”