Bolton travel to the capital this weekend to pit their wits against Fulham in their fourth fixture of the Barclays Premier League season.

Gary Megson held his customary pre-match press conference down at the Reebok Stadium on Thursday afternoon in which a number of issues where discussed including the international break, player fitness and Roy Hodgson's Cottagers.

Gary, the international break has meant that you haven't seen many of your first team players for almost two weeks now, how hopeful are you that they will all return in a fit condition to face Fulham this Saturday?
It's a hindrance and a worry to all of us when you look at what's happened to Michael Essien. It's a nightmare situation to be in and you just hope that all your players come back fit and healthy.

From our point of view, we are aware that everyone is okay apart from Ricardo Gardner, who we are having difficulty contacting.

The football club last saw Bibi half-an-hour after the game against West Brom and we'll see him next when we meet up in London tomorrow because he doesn't arrive in the country until 9 o'clock, which is a little bit difficult to accept.

How does that affect the pre-match preparations?
You want to do the work, but you can't do a great deal on the Friday because you've obviously got the game on the Saturday.

The main work for a Saturday game is done on the Thursday morning, but if we had done that then five of the team wouldn't have been in the country.

One man who enjoyed a decent game on Wednesday night was Ebi Smolarek. How much time have you spent with the player since he signed?
He arrived at the last minute on the day we played West Brom, then he had to shoot off straight away and join up with his international team which is Poland.

We haven't seen him since then, but whilst that is unusual it won't be unique because there will be a few other clubs in the same position this time.

We travel to Fulham this weekend and they are obviously a team containing a lot of confidence following their victory over Arsenal.
They had a good win over Arsenal at home but they also went up to Hull and got beat, so they've had a similar start to ourselves in the first couple of games.

Roy and everybody at Fulham did a fantastic job escaping relegation last season and they've strengthened their side. They must have a huge list of playing staff down there because of the turnover in managers over the last season or so.

Each manager has brought his own players in and I would imagine Fulham have one of the biggest squads in the Premier League.

Both you and Roy did similar jobs last season, taking up the managerial positions when the clubs were struggling in the league. The key focus at the time was staying in the division, which you both achieved, but obviously you will be targeting a higher league position this time round.
We did, and you are right because everybody wants to get off to a good start, but there were a few teams that changed managers because of the position they were in in the league.

Roy managed to keep his club up and I managed to keep this one up, so I feel that from the club's perspective that was a big achievement.

I can't really talk about Fulham because I don't know the exact position they were in when Roy took over, but from our own perspective we were rock bottom after ten games and the response from the players since I have been here has been terrific.

What we have got to do is keep building the football club and make it a better team over the course of the coming months.

How important does putting points on the board early stop the club from getting into a similar situation and contribute towards the final league position?
Everybody is getting in that situation but I do believe that it is getting more and more difficult as every season goes by when you see what is happening at some of the other football clubs.

The league, in my view, is starting to split into three groups of clubs. There's a group with teams looking to get into the Champions League every time, then there's ones that would like to squeeze into Europe and then there's the other lot that just want to be in the Premier League every season.

The top group, whereas it was four, is just going to get bigger and bigger.