Marco Silva praised Rodrigo Muniz’s professionalism after the Fulham forward came off the bench to rescue an opening day point for the Whites at Brighton and Hove Albion this afternoon.

Muniz, who had reportedly told Fulham that he wanted to leave for Serie A side Atalanta this week, cancelled out Matt O’Riley’s penalty in the sixth minute of stoppage time to earn a precious point at the AMEX Stadium.

Silva told his post-match press conference:

“I think he deserves respect for that. Rodrigo is still young and the way you can grow in your career is until the end, in my opinion. The last two seasons he proved himself as a Premier League striker and I’m sure that this season he’s going to be even better. He showed everybody, for the noise around him, how he’s a professional football player and how he respects myself and the team-mates as well. Sometimes it’s not easy the rumours around themselves, the people around themselves, you are talking about their jobs as well. But I think he’s going to handle in the future even better these type of moments.

Rodrigo created something with the Fulham fans that is not so easy to do. First of all they recognise his quality and secondly he is a player that always gives everything for the shirt. It’s nice to see that he scored and that connection is always there.”

Speaking to the Match of the Day cameras in a separate interview, Silva said:

“He [Muniz] is our player, he has a contract. He has a year and another year [on his contract]. I expect it [Muniz to stay] We are trying to find solutions to strengthen our squad. If you don’t want to stand still, you have to sign players. If you don’t want the others to overtake us, we have to strengthen our squad. We have to do much more than what we have done until now in the market.”

The Fulham head coach believed his side deserved a share of the spoils on the balance of play.

“[It was] another dramatic game here. It’s not the first time. It was not the most amazing game from both sides in terms of performance. Until the penalty, the game was balanced. The penalty changed the dynamic of the game. It made the game more open. We showed the fighting spirit and belief that we were capable of scoring. Overall, the draw is a deserved for both sides – a fair result.”