Marco Silva wants to repeat Fulham’s first SW6 derby win in seventeen years when his side take on Chelsea at Craven Cottage on Monday night.
Carlos Vinicius’ second-half header secured Fulham’s first victory over their closest rivals since Silva’s assistant Luis Boa Morte scored the only goal of the game in a famous 2006 success masterminded by Chris Coleman. Silva’s side went on to draw at Stamford Bridge and finish above the Blues for the first time in forty years – and the Portuguese boss wants more of the same next week.
He told his pre-match press conference at Motspur Park this morning:
“You recognise how important it is when you feel the fans. It’s probably the closest club from our football club, and that makes the derby slightly different, but we have some others in London as well. You feel that the game is important for our fans. We want to be competitive, want to fight for the three points. We are playing at home and we want to make their life really difficult.
Last season I had that feeling, how it’s important for our fans, for sure. We gave them a very good week last January when we played against them at the Cottage. After the match, we felt how they were proud of ourselves. This is really special for them. We want to get a good result, we want to make them proud again, and what we can promise is that we are going to give our maximum again for the shirt and to make them proud again. It’s a big thing for us that we are going to play at home, in our environment. We love everything about Craven Cottage matches and, for us, it will be a very good feeling again.”
Chelsea may have only won league game under Mauricio Pochettino, who is battling a serious injury crisis, but Silva was not about to be sucked into writing Monday’s opponents off.
“Chelsea is Chelsea. No-one can underestimate them because the quality is there. Of course, they haven’t started the way they would like. Since Mauricio came in, he is trying to get the things in the right direction for them to fight for titles, like they want to be, but really that’s not the most important thing for us. We will look for ourselves.
We are analysing them, we are going to have a plan for the match, like we have always, it’s not going to be different than what we did against Norwich, that we did last week against Palace, we will do always the same. Of course, we respect them, it’s no different than the respect we had for Palace last week, with Luton the week before, with Norwich, or the next one against Sheffield United.
We cannot hide that it’s a derby, and always a special one. For our fans it’s a really special derby. What we want really, and what we can promise them, is just that we are going to give our maximum really for the shirt and to make them proud.”
