Marco Silva felt Fulham showed Arsenal ‘too much respect’ in the first half of their 2-1 defeat at the Emirates Stadium this evening.

The Whites only managed three touches in the Gunners’ penalty area in the first 45 minutes of the London derby and trailed at the break to a deflected strike from Arsenal’s makeshift striker Mikel Merino. Things got worse when Bukayo Saka scored within seven minutes of ending his three-month injury exile, but Fulham finally made a game of it through substitute Rodrigo Muniz and could have snatched a point at the death.

Silva told his post-match press conference:

[We were] much better in the second half than the first. Our first half was not at a good level, probably too much respect for Arsenal. They pushed us a little bit more lower than we’d like to see, but we were not aggressive enough on the ball, to be honest. We conceded two really, really soft goals but the way we tried always to keep the ball ourselves first half, and not really to be aggressive and to try to punish them, I think made an impact.

[It] was one of the things that we changed clearly in the second half and when you are more aggressive on the ball, trying to match them and trying to be aggressive, of course, we are able to create more chances. That’s one of the reasons why second half we created four good chances – one with Raúl [Jimenez], one with Adama [Traore], and two very good ones with Rodrigo [Muniz], one of them that he scored.

Silva insisted he was still focused on trying to secure European football – despite this frustrating defeat coming hot on the heels of Fulham’s FA Cup exit at the hands of Crystal Palace.

“We have to. It’s what we have been doing so far this season, why would we not be going to fight with eight games to play? We lost tonight, but we didn’t lose the season. We lost three points, and we were not able to get points tonight. We are going to fight really hard, because we have another big game on Sunday to try to get it right again and to bounce back.”