Marco Silva admitted his stressful watching brief from high in the Stadium of Light stands as Fulham snuck past Sunderland in an rollercoaster FA Cup replay last night isn’t something he would care to repeat.
The Portuguese head coach had to serve a touchline ban after picking up a fourth booking of the season in the SW6 derby draw last Friday and paced up and down a television gantry as the Premier League side flirted with throwing away a 2-0 lead against their hosts. Silva told his post-match press conference:
“The view is much, much better, I have to say, but I would like not to repeat [it]. It was a real FA Cup tie with both teams trying to go through. We scored the second goal and at that moment, everyone thought that probably the game would be killed, but they believed until the end. Congratulations to Sunderland. They obligated us to play 180 minutes in this round. They made it difficult for us.”
Silva expressed hope Tom Cairney’s injury was not as serious as initially feared, whilst revealing that substitute Harrison Reed had also twisted his knee.
“They are assessing him, at the beginning it seemed a little bit more serious, now we are more confident it probably won’t be, but later tonight, tomorrow, in two days’ time we are going to see. Harrison Reed as well had some problems, he twisted his knee a little bit, so let’s see in the next few days. Time is really short for the next game, but we will see.”
