Slavisa Jokanovic has insisted Fulham fansĀ ‘don’t need to panic’ despite his side’s slow start to the new Championship season.

Fulham have yet to record a league win and were knocked out of the League Cup by League One Bristol Rovers on Tuesday but the Serbian head coach remains confident that his side can challenge for promotion to the Premier League. He admits that reviving the confidence with which the Whites finished last season could be difficult after two defeats in a week but isn’t paying too much attention to the early league table.

Jokanovic told his press conference ahead of tomorrow’s trip to high-flying Ipswich:

‘In this moment the league table doesn’t matter too much to me and other coaches – it’s only four games behind us. We are a in simple situation now, we make some analysis on the games that are behind us, we were very close to winning the games – we could [have] won the game against Norwich and we were close to winning against Leeds too.

I believe we deserved something against Sheffield Wednesday. We know at this moment we are not at our best level and we must be optimistic and play with confidence and with ambition to be in our normal level. A few new players join us in the last few weeks, some in the last few days and we still try to find the best way to adapt themselves in our style and explaining to them the best way to help us.

At the end, in the football, we don’t need to panic – last season at this time if you asked me if we were be promoted or not I cannot give you any answer like I cannot give you the answer now where we will finish in May. I believe we are a team who will fight for the top table and we will push in this direction without looking behind us and for us our job is to fix some of the mistakes and bring the confidence and the ambition to the team and be confident that we can improve our level because we believe the space exists to be more competitive.

At the beginning we’d attack but we have some problems in front of the opposition goal and in general I complain about not being clinical in front of goal, Ipswich shoot eleven times in four games and put in the net nine goals – this is part of the game too and I expect we can improve ourselves.

Jokanovic also confirmed that Floyd Ayite will miss Saturday’s trip to Portman Road with a hamstring problem, while Sone Aluko will undergo a late fitness test on a hip injury.