Everything seems better after a pair of two Fulham wins. The pundits were busy opining about Fulham’s season petering out a week ago, oblivious to the fact that Marco Silva’s side had put together two of their best performances of an excellent campaign to run Manchester City and Liverpool close. Victories over Leicester, with a touch of the style and adventurous football that has characterised Marco Silva’s approach since he arrived in SW6 and Southampton, even if the Whites didn’t need to do too much to win on the south coast yesterday, leave the Londoners within sight of their best ever Premier League points tally and almost certain to finish above Chelsea in four decades.

Silva is a serious coach, who should be in the running for manager of the year. Making a Fulham side that has made surviving in the top flight appear so torturous in recent seasons look so comfortable upon their return this year is an achievement in itself. But, as we all know, he has done it whilst not compromising on his own philosophy, which has seen full backs haring forward and an accent on attacking football, whilst remaining true to several of the stalwarts who got the club back up to the big time in the first place. Look at the sensational season that Tim Ream, written off by so many as unable to hack in the Premier League, had before his unfortunate fractured arm. Consider how Tom Cairney, who played that exquisite ball to open up the Southampton defence for the opening goal yesterday, has contributed or even the impact that Neeskens Kebano made until injuring his achilles in training.

The Portuguese boss insisted he had unfinished business in England after being sacked by Everton. He could have taken top flight jobs but decided to return with Fulham, who had been relegated and were in a bit of a mess after the Scott Parker era. Silva wouldn’t consider this a risk: he had Luis Boa Morte, a bona-fide Fulham legend who had began his coaching career at Motspur Park and therefore knew just how much young talent resided in the club’s category one academy, at his side – but plenty of the game’s talking heads expressed surprise. Silva swiftly ensured Aleksandar Mitrovic knew he would be the focal point of Fulham’s attack, after the Serbian was ostracised under Parker, and the number nine paid back his new boss in spades.

The second season is notoriously harder, once Premier League rivals have had the opportunity to analyse surprise packages to death, and perhaps that is why Silva has made a few pronouncements in the press recently about the need for a big summer. He says he is no rush to sign his new contract at Craven Cottage. Silva’s stock is high, he would feature on most shortlists for the ridiculous number of jobs that will become vacant over the summer, but he has also learnt to recognise when he is in a good position. Few owners will offer the financial backing that can come from the Khans and Fulham feel like they could be on the cusp of a new era: with the Riverside Stand nearing completion and a team that seems strangely unafraid of competing with the English elite.

The most important signature over the next few months won’t belong to a new signing: it will be Silva’s. The head coach and his backroom staff are pivotal to the Fulham project. He holds much more control than any of his predecessors during Shahid Khan’s custodianship – even if that word is laced with irony following the season ticket hikes that leave a sour taste in the month. No manager will ever be given free reign to sign whoever they want given the FFP constraints and the benefits of data-driven analytics, but Silva’s success means he will have far more latitude than those who went before. What excites me is what Silva might be able to do with the youngsters already starring for Steve Wigley’s under 21s. We saw how comfortable Fabio Carvalho looked as a number ten – consider, for instance, the promising glimpses we’ve seen or Luke Harris and how well Jay Stansfield adapted to Premier League life in an unfamiliar position before his emotional loan at Exeter.

As a Fulham fan, it usually pays not to think too far ahead. Most of us wondered where Roy Hodgson might take the side he had steered to the Europa League final thirteen years ago whilst the man himself was preparing to take over at Liverpool. The Khan era had barely began before we saw a surfeit of managers and a limp relegation, from which the club took years to recover. But, barring having another successful manager nicked from under our noses, this appears to be the most stable this football club has looked for a while.

Silva is a serial winner and a perfectionist. He will only want the best and his ambition will be unfiltered by the fact that London’s oldest professional football club has never won a major trophy. The anger that oozed out of him after the FA Cup quarter final defeat at Old Trafford earlier this season was telling. Fulham had put together 70 minutes of the most controlled and dominant away display we’d seen in decades before falling apart. His fury wasn’t, as many suspected, misdirection but disappointment at the chance of reaching the semi-finals, something the Whites hadn’t done in two decades, slipping away during a few moments of madness.

A realistic look at the top flight would suggest that several of the established names, including our neighbours in the blue half of SW6, would have to be better next season. There are financial and commercial constraints, too, and it would be foolhardy to project from this campaign to the next by predicting that Fulham could look forward to continental competition. Those European tour songs from earlier in the season always felt like a giddy reaction to the Whites winning games we never expected to – and in some style, too. But, whilst consolidation in the top flight must be the initial aim, there is enough to suggest that the future could be very exciting and, with Silva’s eye for a signing, a few more fine players could soon be strutting their stuff at Craven Cottage yet.