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Fulham and Australian international Mark Schwarzer is one of the outstanding goalkeepers and professionals in the English Premier League.

Schwarzer's performances this season have come to the attention of football coaches and pundits alike, with Fulham manager Roy Hodgson recently identifying the Australian as the Premier League “signing of the season” after his summer move from Middlesbrough. Applause for Schwarzer has been intensifying in recent weeks following stellar performances against Liverpool and his old club, Middlesbrough. Yet statistics have been telling of the Australian's performances all season.

Schwarzer leads the EPL in save percentage, saving 85% of all shots on target, and Fulham's Goals-Against-Average per game has been cut from 1.58 goals per game last season (15/20 in EPL) to .85 goals per game (4/20 in EPL) with Schwarzer in net. To put that in more concrete terms, Fulham last season conceded 60 goals. This season, with Schwarzer in net, the club are on pace to concede just 32 goals. No club other than Man Utd, Chelsea and Liverpool has a better defensive record.

I had the opportunity to speak with the shot-stopper two days after his Man of the Match performance against his old club, Middlesbrough.

It is perhaps surprising to learn from Schwarzer that this season's success comes after a difficult time in his career. He admits that he felt written off and had lost some of his hunger for the game at the end of his tenure at Middlesbrough, and he wanted to rekindle that desire. In this way, he viewed his move to Fulham not only as a change of clubs, but as an opportunity to prove to himself and his critics that he could continue to excel at the highest level of football. This drive of course propelled Schwarzer despite his new club's chances of any EPL success being ridiculed by many before the season even began. “I've been reinvigorated coming to a new club. I'm enjoying my football even more than I have before and it's brought that hunger back again...leaving Middlesbrough after 11 ½ years and being really written off and said I was not good enough and past my used by date, coming to Fulham, it was seen by a lot of people as a club that was going to be fighting for survival.”

One can be excused for saying these expectations of Fulham were warranted. Fulham survived last season on the last day of the season, while Middlesbrough were relatively comfortably, finishing the season in 13^th position. Yet Fulham manager Roy Hodgson and his players were determined to prove the club's critics wrong. This has been done. “We've been able to prove the contrary to that (the low expectations of Fulham),” says Schwarzer. Fulham sit on the cusp of Europe on the backs of one of the strongest defenses in the league, while Middlesbrough are feeling the full effect of the Australian's departure.

Its clearly saddens Schwarzer to see his old club struggling as they are, but from a personal standpoint, it is equally apparent that he felt written off and was determined to reinvigorate his hunger for football at another club. “It was disappointing to see Middlesbrough in the position that they are in...but I play for a new club and my allegiance is with a new club and we want to qualify for Europe.”

Schwarzer is the first to admit that he is happy in London and that his performance this season will hold a special place when he looks back upon his career. “This has got to be one of the most rewarding [seasons of my career] in the sense of self-reward...a season I'll look upon in the future with high regard because of not only the way we've performed as a team but the way I've performed individually.”

Followers of Fulham would have to concur with the Australian. The team's success is constructed around sound defense, something which all football managers know cannot exist without a top goalkeeper. “We've defended very well...if you don't concede a goal, you have a good chance of at least getting a point if not winning the game. That's been the mindset from the beginning,” says Schwarzer.

This strategic mindset speaks volumes about coach Roy Hodgson and his trust in the Australian. The team has only been able to play this defensive strategy and achieve such success due to full trust in it's last line of defense.

Yet we all know that teams cannot attain success based solely on trust and rhetorical strategies. The great managers of the game are not only good man managers. They are also tacticians and motivators. “[Hodgson is] a good motivator as well as a good man manager and a good coach, so I think he's got three very important ingredients that create a very very good manager.”

Game strategies are built in the training pitch upon hard-work, communication, demonstration and the trusting of team members. It is clear that it is on the training pitch where Hodgson makes his mark to players. Schwarzer notes, “Hodgson is...a good trainer. He spends probably 95% of the time plus on the training field doing 95% of the training sessions and for me that's probably one of the highest percentage rates I've ever seen a manager be so involved with the team.”

Hodgson is a very hands-on tutor who personally ensures that his players are fully knowledgeable of their own strategy and fully prepared for opponents.

When not on the training pitch, Hodgson ensures that his players study video to learn not only their own strategies and strengths and weaknesses, but those of Fulham's opponents as well. “At Fulham we have three or four video sessions per week – on our opponents, on ourselves, on our previous performance, on our coming opponents.” With the intensification of game analysis, room for error on the football pitch has become smaller, making it crucial for players to study tape of both team strategies and individual scenarios. Schwarzer comments, “I think [video analysis] is a very important and vital part of being a professional footballer these days.”

But what strategies does Hodgson provide his players to study? The kind of analysis a coach provides of course depends on what the coach views as valuable information to know, which again is dependent upon what the coach sees as his and his opponent's skill-set.

The great coaches, as in any leadership position, know the most about their own team's strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of their opponents. This obviously requires extensive knowledge of the game and confidence in one's own judgment, attributes that are difficult to find in football analysts. “I think that a lot of coaches, a lot of managers at times probably don't really know how to identify what their strong points are and what their weak points are,” Schwarzer remarks. In Hodgson, Fulham have a coach who knows the game inside-out.

Once a coach chooses what to teach, he must be able to effectively communicate that information. Effective communication is another tool of the great coaches. Hodgson knows how to communicate his message. “The difference [between the great managers and those still learning is that the great ones] know how to use that information and transfer that information across to players and show them what [he] wants them to do – showing players what opponents are doing and how we are able to combat [them] if they are a far superior team or whether they are a team that has weaknesses. I think that all teams have weaknesses and I think that the good managers know how to really use [analysis] to their advantage.”

No EPL team automatically challenges for Europe. Fulham, a team with a small transfer budget and small payroll, was instead expected to fight for its league survival. People obviously forgot about the football mind running the club. Hodgson signed Mark Schwarzer in the summer to serve as the backbone of his defense and used his training resources and time to teach a defense-first approach built around the Australian. Eight months later, Schwarzer leads the league in save-percentage and is being hailed as the EPL “signing of the season”, while Fulham are on the cusp of European qualification with the fourth best defensive record in the EPL.

With regards to the most memorable moment of Schwarzer's career, you probably will remember the event. “It would have to be qualification for the 2006 World Cup.” He famously led Australia to her second ever World Cup qualification in 2006 by saving 2 penalties in a penalty shoot-out victory against Uruguay in front of 83,000 stadium fans and an estimated 7 million watching on television. In a sports world in which top athletes are expected to perform under pressure in clutch situations, little can outdo Schwarzer's penalty magic that catapulted Australia to the World Cup Finals.

Oh, and if you do not already know, Schwarzer is a children's author. “Being a parent and having a son as my oldest child, when he was getting a bit older and wanting to read...I found it was very difficult to find books that were oriented toward football and boys...There was a niche there to really get into and try to encourage reading among boys and try to explore the avenue of writing about football.” You can get a copy of Schwarzer's book here.