Marco Silva has warned his Fulham side that they are likely to be embarrassed if they take Millwall lightly at Craven Cottage tomorrow night.
Millwall might be fifteenth in the Championship table but are coming off impressive results against Preston North End and West Brom – and the Fulham head coach has seen enough to know that they will exploit any mental frailty if Fulham are not on top of their game.
Silva told his pre-match press conference at Motspur Park this afternoon:
“We’re facing a team who will show a big respect for what we are doing so far, but at the same time they want to match us and create problems for us with their style and the way they like to play. We have to play with full focus every time. They are a team that doesn’t need many things to create problems for you – long ball, second ball, they can create problems for you, and you always have to be fully focused and match them.
And we will play in our way with the ball, express ourselves like we have done so far, with quality and intensity. We may have to be patient as well, and we will do our best to win the football match. When we played there in the first half of the season, our third game of the season, it was a really important moment for us.
The way we played from kick-off, we made a big, big impact on the pitch with our quality, our intensity. Millwall as a team is really tough in all the challenges, all the duels, but we did fantastically against them.”
Silva insists there is still much more to come from his side, despite Fulham taking thirteen points from their last fifteen, and highlighted his disappointment after their second half at Manchester City in the FA Cup on Saturday as a demonstration of where they are currently falling short.
“There is big room to improve. I won’t say to you everything that we should improve, but there are many things. I think the second half of the City match is a good example. We did so well during the first half, had some brilliant moments, but we couldn’t do it again in the second half after the third goal.
That is a good example of something we can improve, but looking at the Championship, we have many, many things we can improve as a collective, to get us to a different level. Players who are not playing as many games as they expected, we have to create the conditions for them to match and compete with the others. Big fights will come for us, and we must keep improving to be at our best level, because it will be tough until the end of the season.”
