Marco Silva says it is ‘unbelievable’ that he will take bring up a century of competitive games in charge of Fulham when Luton Town come to Craven Cottage this afternoon.

The Fulham head coach told his press conference yesterday that he was unaware of the impending milestone until just before he was due to address the media and wants to mark his landmark match with a win against the Hatters. Silva, who led Fulham to tenth in the top flight last term having steered the Whites back to the Premier League after taking over from Scott Parker two summers ago, said:

“How time flies! Carmelo [Mifsud, Fulham’s director of communications] mentioned that to me before the press conference started. I didn’t know that. It’s a nice number, it is a good number and time flies, it’s unbelievable. It has been not a long, long time but it has been a good time. Sometimes football is so intense, the job is so intense – it is the way I like to live my life as well – that sometimes you don’t feel the time going. The reality that it is already one hundred official matches is going to be tomorrow. It is a nice number, but again, what is in my mind is trying to stamp that number with three points in a game that is going to be really tough for us.”

Silva is confident that his side will improve now that a difficult August is behind them.

“I’m going to tell you that we have to play football matches, we have to try to get points, we have to try to win matches – it doesn’t matter when. Under really difficult circumstances last month, we had the four Premier League games and the Carabao Cup game against Tottenham a tough, tough side, we wanted to have more points, it is true. But we were under difficult circumstances. I didn’t have one day from the beginning of the season with all of the squad ready to work and of course other circumstances that we could not control, we have spoken [about] before.

We have been competitive in all of the games. Things that we cannot control make things more difficult for us, like the penalty against Brentford, some mistakes we made against Brentford, the offside goal against City and the penalty that for me were clear mistakes, the type of things we cannot control. It is not an excuse for us, [I] prefer to look forward and we can improve and we are going to improve – I’m one hundred per cent sure. We need time to gel, to create the connections between the players that are here from last season and the new players that have arrived, but we will do our best to win football matches. We have to do our job now, winning matches inside the pitch.”