Marco Silva has confirmed that Fulham’s deadline day signings Cedric Soares and Sasa Lukic are both available for selection for tomorrow night’s clash with Chelsea.

The Whites brought in full back Cedric from Arsenal on loan and snapped up Serbian midfielder Lukic from Torino for an initial fee of around £8m.

Silva told his pre-match press conference this afternoon that the pair will help ‘raise the level’ of his squad for the remainder of the season:

“There were two positions that we wanted to strengthen in our squad, the right-back position and we wanted to create more competition in our midfield as well, to give us different solutions. It was a busy last day for us as a football club, I know you like it, but we don’t like it so much as a football club. But it’s part of the year and part of the market, it’s not easy to do even if we would like to have the players early because it is always better for us with a busy January and a lot of games as well.

Cedric knows the football club and has played in the Premier League already and has a lot of knowledge that will help us for sure. Lukic is another mature player as well in a good age, another quality player who will give something different for us and create competition. I think both of them will raise the level of our team.”