Slavisa Jokanovic has admitted that captain Tom Cairney could miss Fulham’s trip to Middlesbrough on Saturday as the midfielder is once again struggling with the knee injury that has so disrupted his 2017/18 season.
Jokanovic rested Cairney for last weekend’s FA Cup third round defeat by Southampton to try and give his skipper the best chance of featuring when the Whites returned to league action but the Fulham head coach told his press conference this afternoon that he was still unsure whether the Scottish international would be able to feature against Tony Pulis’s side.
Jokanovic revealed that Fulham would give the former Blackburn Rovers playmaker as much time as possible to regain full fitness and that he would be assessed again ahead of the trip to the Riverside:
With Tom Cairney it’s many months he’s been in an up/down situation, we must asses the situation with him and in this moment we don’t know if he will be available or not for the Boro game. He is one of our best players and all the season he’s been with some kind of a problem and we didn’t find a quality enough solution for his knee.
At the end, we expect to find the best version of this man because this man can make us play better football and can make people around him be better. We expect we will find some solution, there’s too many up/downs and this kind of situation can damage himself, and us too but it’s part of the football and we are going to find the solution.
Jokanovic also revealed that Floyd Ayite is definitely out of contention for the trip to the north east with a calf injury, whilst goalkeeper Marcus Bettinelli and Kevin McDonald are in with a chance of playing having returned to training earlier today.
