Marco Silva was pleased to see his Fulham side move into the quarter finals of the FA Cup for the first time in thirteen years after the Whites beat Leeds 2-0 at Craven Cottage last night.
Silva’s side booked a place in the last eight of the world’s oldest club cup competition thanks to sensational strikes from Joao Palhinha and Manor Solomon, who scored for the fourth game in succession. They rode their luck at times with Leeds spurning a number of good opportunities in front of goal but Silva told his post-match press conference that he was determined to end Fulham’s recent poor record in the Cup.
“I said from the first day of this competition that we aim really high and our ambition is really high in this competition. We are humble enough to understand that we are not favourites at all, the favourites are different teams than us but we want to chase the competition and chase all the opposition sides. Any time you are going to play this competition, it’s always to try to go through and play with full ambition.
We have been really serious the way we approach [the FA Cup] and the players have been really serious as well. And I’m really pleased for them because they deserve it. We know, as a club, that our story in this competition is not really great. This season we have changed so many things in this football club in terms of results, and our ambition is to do something different as well. Let’s see what we are going to do in the next round, but our ambition is clear.”
The Fulham head coach paid tribute to Javi Gracia’s side, who gave the hosts some seriously nervy moments and were unfortunate not to score themselves.
“The way Leeds came to approach the game, it was easy to understand from the first minute they were not a team to press really high, they waited for us to start to control the game. And we started to do it, to create some dangerous moments, not big chances but dangerous moments around their box, and them waiting for some dangerous counter attacks with the quality players and really fast players they have in their attack line.
And in some moments they waited for us and we gave them what they wanted. Of course, the first goal gave us the confidence we needed, we started to control the game a little better, some good moments for ourselves. Probably we could even have punished them with a second goal and the game could be different. They had a very good chance at the end of the first half in one moment that came off the post.
Second half was different, I think we should have done much better in certain moments. We cannot be winning a game at home and be unbalanced so many times. We lost the ball quickly in certain areas, which you cannot do, and every time we lost the ball, we give the chance to them to make some dangerous counter attacks. They created much more than we would like. The players, they already know, I already spoke with them.
Even if we won the game, it’s clearly something that we have to work on to improve because you cannot give the chance for them to make so many counter attacks and create so many chances.”
I think he nailed it on the head with what he said, I don’t think we are playing our fast fluent football that we were playing earlier in the season, we have started passing too many balls backwards and sideways like we did when Parker was in charge and we take too long to play the ball forward,Mitro was starved of service and he can’t score goals if he isn’t getting the ball. I thought our defence was not up to scratch and Cedric was not doing his defensive job he was continually caught up front and they were able to attack his position. They could easily have scored 5 or 6 goals with better finishing so let’s not get carried away with this result.
yes we are playing slower, and have you noticed that we have slipped back to only playing well in one half not both like we used to. Having said that we are still streets ahead of where we were before Silva.
I wouldn’t criticise Cedric at this stage. he@s hardly played all season and needs time to bed into the side. From memory I think he has always been better at going forward than defending but with Silva coaching him who knows how much he can improve. Look at how Kebano, Tete, BDR, Robinson to name just a few have improved.
Tete is the best defensive right back in the Premiership now and yet before the season started there were opinions floating around that he wasn’t good enough for the Premiership.