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DATE: Saturday 4th October 2008, 3pm
FIXTURE: West Bromwich Albion v Fulham
COMPETITION: Barclays Premiership
Albion will be looking for back to back victories for the first time this season when Fulham visit The Hawthorns on Saturday. The game also sees the return of Zoltan Gera who left Albion to join The Cottagers in the Summer when his Albion contract expired, the other ex Albion players Diomansy Kamara and Pascal Zuberbuhler are both highly unlikely to be involved on the pitch.
Jonas Ollson scored his first goal for Albion last Saturday in a 1-0 win at the Riverside Stadium against Middlesbrough, the win giving the club their first away win of the season, chances again spurned which would have made the victory safe at the end when Ishmael Miller burst through three times, twice with team-mates in better positions he chose to go it alone to no avail. At the other end Scott Carson once again showed his England class keeping out a succession of Boro efforts as Albion hung on for a well earned victory. The game was soured however with an injury to Kim in the first few minutes of the game which will rule him out for around 6 weeks. The win sees Albion sitting in twelfth place with seven points going into the weekends games.
Fulham under Roy Hodgson are three places below Albion in fifteenth with six points although they have played a game less, their two victories both coming at home 1-0 against Arsenal and 2-1 against Bolton. They have lost their last two games 1-0 at Blackburn and last week they went down 2-1 at home to West Ham and had Andrew Johnson sent off for two bookable offences which will rule him out of Saturdays clash. Fulham made a number of signings in the transfer window with John Pantsil, Bobby Zamora (both from Fulham), Tony Kallio (Young Boys Bern, undisclosed), Andranik Teymourian (Bolton, free), David Stockdale (Darlington, undisclosed), Mark Schwarzer (Middlesbrough, free), Fredrik Stoor (Rosenborg, undisclosed), Pascal Zuberbuhler (Neuchatel Xamax, free), Andrew Johnson (Everton, undisclosed), Dickson Etuhu (Sunderland, undisclosed), Julian Gray (Coventry, loan) plus of course Zoltan Gera from Albion. Around seventeen players departed the club with the most noticeable being Brian McBride and David Healy.
There have been six previous meetings between the sides in the Premier League with neither side winning away from home, Albion winning the first meeting 1-0 at The Hawthorns in August 2002, Darren Moore scoring the only goal as Albion began a run of three successive Premier League wins for the first and so far only time.The other meetings have seen two draws (1-1 Sept 2004 & 0-0 Dec 2005) both at The Hawthorns. The three games at Craven Cottage have all ended in Fulham victories 3-0 in February 2003, 1-0 in January 2005 and a 6-1 thrashing in February 2006, Kevin Campbell scoring for Albion as the club began a run of 13 Premier League games without victory picking up only 3 points during the run. The clubs also met in the Carling Cup in October 2005 at Craven Cottage, Albion pulling off a 302 win after extra time with a 35 yarder from Junichi Inamoto being added to by Kanu and the winner coming from Robert Earnshaw.
TEAM NEWS
WEST BROMWICH ALBION
Albion will be without Kim due to his knee injury suffered at Middlesbrough. Neil Clement is another knee injury victim and will be out to the knee year. Chris Brunt has a hamstring injury and will be out for around a month with Abdoulaye Meite out with a calf problem. Filipe Teixeira played an hour for the reserves in mid-week but is 3 or 4 weeks away from a first team return. Ishmael Miller or Sherjill MacDonald could replace Kim.
FULHAM
For Fulham Andrew Johnson is serving a one match ban following his dismissal last weekend. Former Baggie Diomansy Kamara is a long term knee injury victim while another ex Baggie Pascal Zuberbuhler is expected to be on the bench.
TICKET INFORMATION
This game has completely SOLD OUT.
COME ON YOU BAGGIES!!! 
