Marco Silva hasn’t exactly poured scorn on Fulham’s fantastic achievements since returning to the top flight, but such is the focus of a coach described over the weekend by Troy Deeney, someone he didn’t select regularly whilst with Watford, as ‘a serial winner’ that the Portuguese head coach will have reminded his squad that the Whites haven’t won anything yet. You can’t argue with assessment. Fulham are flying but, with the season about to move into that critical phase where the successfully sides serenely stitch wins together, they will need to maintain Silva’s seriously high standards to secure another European tour.

The fact that Fulham fans might even be contemplating another continental jaunt after years of yo-yoing between the top two divisions depressingly would have sounded preposterous at the start of the season. But Silva has imbued such belief in a side that stormed to the Championship style in a manner that Jean Tigana would have smiled at, that there has been no fear of attacking the Premier League with such verve. The Whites have shown their adaptability, grinding out gritty victories like the one at Brighton a few weeks ago as well, and have taken all the Champions’ League chasers to the wire.

Tonight’s test at Brentford is, as the Fulham boss recognised on Friday, likely to be one of their sternest of the whole season. One of the things that he has done since taking over from Scott Parker is greatly improve Fulham’s performance in London derbies. Set aside, for a moment, the fact that the Cottagers have taken four points from the sanctioned side in SW6 – if only because Graham Potter’s expensively-assembled squad are hilariously struggling for any reliability barring being consistently poor. The Whites can win a fourth London derby in a season for the first time in their history in Hounslow this evening, but it won’t be easy.

Silva himself has lavished praise on the work done by Thomas Frank since the Danish boss succeeded Dean Smith at Griffin Park in October 2018. Brentford recovered from Joe Bryan’s brilliance at Wembley to do much more than survive in their first season in the top flight for 74 seasons and have thrived when some pundits were predicting second season syndrome might set in. The secrets haven’t been that well hidden. The Bees, always a club with their local community at their heart, have been brilliantly run by Matthew Benham, Cliff Crown, Rasmus Ankersen and Phil Giles in particularly for many years and their exceptional recruitment has put many supposedly ‘bigger’ outfits to shame.

Even this summer, when Brentford were quiet operators in the summer window in comparison to some of the serious spending taking place elsewhere, shrewd acquisitions removed any worries about the departure of Christian Eriksen, who galvanised the side on his return to football following that horrible afternoon in Copenhagen, for Manchester United. They spent wisely on the outstanding Aaron Hickey and the promising Lewis Kean-Potter, whilst offering Ben Mee a chance to remain in the Premier League after years of sterling service at Brentford, and persuaded the dynamic Dane Mikkel Daamsgard to move to Middlesex from Sampdoria.

Adding those signings to a squad that had registered a number of notable victories in their first Premier League campaign meant Brentford were far from a one-season wonder. There might be in an elephant in the room at the moment as the disciplinary case against Ivan Toney moves towards a conclusion – although not without a number of breaches of confidentiality before England squads are set to be name – but, as Silva again emphasised, last week Brentford are more than a one-man team. Fulham will still need to stop Yoane Wisa and Bryan Mbeumo from firing in the final third as well as Toney, who has scored fifteen goals in 23 games this term, whilst curbing the influence of Christian Nørgaard, Mathias Jensen and Josh Dasilva in the engine room.

That task will be made harder by the absence of the Premier League’s most prolific tackler. Joao Palhinha is still smarting from being suspended for two league fixtures having reached ten yellow cards, but the Portuguese midfielder’s absence allows Sasa Lukic an opportunity to impress against two of the country’s most in-form sides. Brentford are unbeaten in eleven games and the Whites will need to match their intensity from the outset if they are to stand any chance of recording a first league double over their near neighbours in three quarters of a century.

MY FULHAM XI (4-2-3-1): Leno; Tete, A. Robinson, Diop, Ream; Reed, Lukic; Willian, Solomon, Pereira; Mitrovic. Subs: Rodak, Cedric Soares, Duffy, Adarabioyo, Harris, Decordova-Reid, Wilson, James, Vinicius.