Start your Friday morning the right way by reading Daniel Storey’s column in the I. Storey is one of the most engaging football writers in the country, perhaps a by-product of writing funny and bang on the money content for Football 365 for several years, but I was still to read such a succinct summary of why Marco Silva should be the manager of the season in the mainstream press.
Most of what Storey writes is what the Craven Cottage regulars already know about Silva’s time in SW6 but the advocacy for the Portuguese head coach is welcome because Fulham don’t tend to generate column inches in the press unless they have been beaten by one of the ‘big six’ or Aleksandar Mitrovic is busy bothering match officials. I’d only quibble slightly with Steven Sessegnon’s inclusion in the list of first-team talent denied to Silva last summer – his season on loan at Charlton Athletic has been a real success and was undoubtedly the right decision – but everything else is spot on and we are left with an overriding impression of the main man’s insatiable appetite for victory.
It is difficult to argue with Storey’s concluding paragraph:
“For Silva himself [this season is], a crowning achievement after perceived underachievement and accusations of flakiness elsewhere. He knows that those in the punditocracy class viewed him with suspicion, all hype and no substance; Silva was determined to prove each of them wrong. There are other managers who have overachieved this season, those who have and will lift trophies. But for sheer consistency against expectation, Fulham’s run of 40 weeks in the top half is unsurpassed. Silva would be a fully merited winner of the Manager of the Year award.”
So, with those stirring words ringing in your ears, what are you waiting for? Go and vote for Marco – as the Premier League manager of the season.
