Marco Silva is taking nothing for granted after his Fulham side built up a five point cushion at the top of the Championship – and has called on his side to redouble their efforts in pursuit of promotion.
The Whites had to show their steelier side at Stoke City last weekend having streamrollered their way past Reading, Bristol City and Birmingham City by scoring nineteen goals in eight days and believes another stern test will come tomorrow against Blackpool. Neil Critchley’s side sent Fulham to their first defeat of the season at Bloomfield Road in September and Silva is fully aware that his side cannot afford their standards to slip.
He told this afternoon’s pre-match press conference:
“We go into every game expecting to win, but knowing that we must work at least the same as our opponents to win the match. Our players know that the demands we place on ourselves are really high, from myself and the players as well. And they go into the match knowing it will be really difficult, but the main thing is the three points.
“If you score a good number of goals or not, it will be a consequence from our performance, but the main thing for us is to win football matches. We’ll show a big respect to our opponents because we know how hard we have to work to achieve these types of results. We have to stay really humble in this competition, keep our feet on the ground, because nothing is easy in football and we have to keep working really hard.”
Silva also spoke of his desire to keep more clean sheets in the second half of the season.
“First I would like to win the match, and myself and my players and my staff will do our best to win the game, respecting Blackpool of course, it will be tough for sure. They’re a team with very good organisation, but we’ll do our best to win the match again. Our offensive organisation has been really, really good, but of course we clearly have to improve in some moments. The room to improve is still really big for us. Of course, I would like to see our team keep winning football matches, but keeping clean sheets would be the perfect scenario.”
