Perhaps it is a mark of Marco Silva’s seemingly ceaseless pursuit of excellence that he spent part of his press conference following Fulham’s fabulous flaying of Blackburn last night outlining why he has been disappointed that his centre backs have failed to get on the scoresheet this season.
Most of the column inches devoted to Fulham’s rich recent vein of form have focused on the goalscoring exploits of Aleksandar Mitrovic. That’s perfectly understandable given that the Serbian striker – virtually unplayable at this level and enjoying his football again having been frozen out by Scott Parker – has reached nineteen goals after just sixteen games. But, as Silva explained at Ewood Park last night, a key part of his tactical plan is to get all of his starting line-up finding the net.
That’s why he was so pleased with the variety of goals the Whites scored in last night’s Lancashire rout.
“It’s really important that we start to spread our goals from the other players. When you have a player like him that creates so many chances and we have a player with his capacity and his ability to score goals of course he’s important and he’ll keep being really important for this football club.
But I’m demanding from the others as well. My wingers normally score goals, and my midfielders as well, and they know that. Kebano, Rodrigo, Wilson, they know what I demand from them to take the right decisions, to attack, to score goals, to arrive in the right spots as well and they are offensive midfielders as well. Even our central defenders, they know how much I’m demanding from them, that we should start to score more goals from set pieces.”
Fulham’s proficiency from set plays has been one of the real plus points in this campaign. Mitrovic’s header from a fine Jean Michael Seri corner was their sixth from a set piece this season – the second best record in the division. Clearly, the next target is to see centre halves with the aerial ability of Tim Ream, Tosin Adarabioyo, Michael Hector and Alfie Mawson heading home.
