Slavisa Jokanovic has told his Fulham side to ‘show ambition’ when they take on Sheffield United in another crunch Championship clash this evening – but has warned the Whites they can’t afford to repeat the defensive mistakes they made at Bramall Lane.
The Serbian head coach watched his side cling on to three points in November after an end-to-end nine-goal thriller after Chris Wilder’s nearly completed the most incredible of late comebacks and Jokanovic doesn’t want a repeat of that at Craven Cottage tonight. The Fulham boss told the club’s official website that he is wary of the Blades’ potency in attack:
They are an offensive team, like us, they have important offensive players. They try and play in the last third, they score goals. They have [Leon] Clarke with 15 goals, [Billy] Sharp with 12, and [Clayton] Donaldson with five goals. They are always looking to dominate the game.
We played a little bit of a strange game against them which we won after conceding four goals. We cannot expect something similar, but I am sure they are going to try and do us damage.
Jokanovic knows that Wilder’s men will pose a serious threat to Fulham’s fine run at the start of 2018 – with United aiming to make the Championship play-offs having been promoted from League One last season.
They have a serious option of playing in the play-offs. They spent half the season in the top-two and they only recently dropped out of the play-off positions. It’s a strong, tough, and really complicated team to play against. They are going to look to score the goals, so we must follow our style and show ambition, show desire to do them damage.
The Fulham head coach is staying true to his mantra of taking each game as it comes – refusing to consider the wider promotion picture – even if the pundits are now beginning to talk up the possibility of his side making a late charge for the second automatic promotion spot.
Each game, that’s the focus. I’m not looking at where we’re going to finish. Now all we’re thinking about is the Sheffield United game. After this result our only target is the Preston game, and that’s it,.
