Marco Silva insists Fulham will need to be at their very best to register a third win in a row against struggling Wolverhampton Wanderers at Craven Cottage tomorrow afternoon.
The Fulham head coach wants his side to reprise their form from before the international break, which saw them win London derbies against Brentford and Crystal Palace, but that will require setting aside their struggles after national service earlier this season. The Whites were left frustrated after the first international break of the campaign, when Danny Ings stoppage-time equaliser stole a point for West Ham in September, and then were beaten by Aston Villa at the Cottage and Silva knows Gary O’Neill’s Wolves will be a tough to crack.
He told his pre-match press conference at Motspur Park this afternoon:
“We are progressing, but nothing is guaranteed in this level that we are playing. We are going to face a good side, the challenge is to get the third [victory] in a row. Some more challenges there for us – to react completely different to how we did from the last two international breaks, because after the last two international breaks, the reaction, in terms of results, they weren’t the best, and we want to react in a different way.
It’s a challenge for us, and it’s there for us tomorrow to face it. And with support from our fans at Craven Cottage, we want to get the three points. We have been performing really well. And we probably deserve even more points than what we have right now, because some games we deserved three points and didn’t get them, was a bit frustrating for us.
We have been able to rebuild from the players that we lost, some great characters that we lost, but we signed some very good players, and great characters as well, inside our dressing room. It’s been a good challenge for us. We have been performing well, players settling well, really quick, in the way we want to play in our football club. We’ve had some very good performances, the players feel the confidence, they feel the trust from ourselves. They trust in the process as well.”
Silva believes Wolves are on the up – having been unbeaten in three fixtures before the international break – despite remaining in the bottom three.
“Analysing Wolves and looking for what they have been doing, I know that just last game they achieved the first win, three games unbeaten. But if you look for all their results in the Premier League, only in the first game they didn’t score. All the other games they scored.
And it’s going to be a matter of time, if they start to keep clean sheets and they don’t concede goals, it’s going to be a matter of time for them to win games. It’s what happened in the last game – they scored twice, and they won because they didn’t concede.
It’s a team, in my opinion, that has quality. They have a lot of individual quality, real Premier League quality there, players that can be decisive in any moment of the game. They have a good striker, a striker that is not easy to control. The way he holds the ball, the way he is capable to go running behind two in the box. He is a strong player, too.
I think they added good players to the players that they had already. They have a very good squad, and probably much more confident right now than before, with the good results. It’s going to demand ourselves to be at our best level, it’s going to demand from our home support to be great for us, to push us forward again. We know that we have to be at the same level that we played against Brentford, for example, last home game, or last game against Crystal Palace, to be ready to fight for the three points.”
