Marco Silva hailed the brilliance of Bernd Leno for keeping Fulham in the game after the Whites rode their luck to record an opening day win at Goodison Park.

Substitute Bobby De Cordova-Reid scored a second-half winner but German goalkeeper Leno made a string of fine saves whilst the game was deadlock at 0-0 and repelled plenty of Everton pressure.

Silva told his post-match press conference:

“That was not a good performance from ourselves at all. I think overall during the game, we didn’t perform at our level. Even if we started the game well, after the first 15-20 minutes we started to lose so many balls in our build-up, in certain areas. We gave so many chances for Everton to punish us in counter attacks.

They had their chances, of course, a good number of chances during the first half, because we gave them so many moments for them to punish us. To be honest, it was much more our fault because we didn’t perform. Bernd kept us in the game. A great, great performance from Bernd Leno kept us in the game in certain moments when we were under pressure.

We changed some things at half-time, second half was slightly different. Great impact from the players that came from the bench – Bobby, Mitro and Andreas. It was nice to see them involved in the goal we scored, a great moment from ourselves, open play moment that combined down our right side and with Bobby on the opposite side. It was probably our best moment during the match.

We hit the post as well, like Everton hit the crossbar, we had more chances in the second than the first, but in terms of our compactness, in terms of defensive organisation, it was not really good, not even 50 per cent what it should be. Even so, we were able to win a football match. In this circumstance, it is a great feeling for us.

It is not a problem for me to say probably Everton deserved a different result this afternoon. But football is like that, in some moments it’s going to be ourselves playing better, creating more chances but not winning.”