Alan Pardew: "If he is fit enough to play, it would be important because he's a good player - a great player.
"If there was one defender to beat and I had to choose a player too take him on beat him, it would be Hatem. That's his real strength.
"The little history I did about him in France was enough to convince me that he had massive talent.
"It was just a question of whether I could work with him and get into his head, and I felt I could do that with the experience I'd had of Yossi Benayoun, Carlos Tevez, Javier Mascherano, Teddy Sheringham, and fortunately it seems to have worked out.
"Every Premier League game brings its own difficulties, so it doesn't really matter too much who the opposition is.
"It's about ourselves and we produced a level of football against Wigan and Stoke that has buoyed us all on the training ground, and you can see that.
"There's definitely a stronger attitude to attack games."
"Fulham are a good side and they play very, very well at home, so it's a tough encounter.
"Last year, we probably played our best half of football in the first half.
"Unfortunately, the second half was probably our worst, so we are hoping we don't put in that Jekyll and Hyde performance that we did last year."