Marco Silva has revealed he ‘made it clear’ to Fulham’s board he was unhappy with the summer transfer uncertainty that disrupted Fulham’s preparations for the new Premier League campaign.
The Aleksandar Mitrovic saga bedevilled the Whites’ participation in the Summer Series in America, where Silva held crunch talks with chairman Shahid Khan, before the Serbian was sold to Saudi side Al Hilal two weeks into the new season and influential midfielder Joao Palhinha was within minutes from being sold to Bayern Munich at the end of the transfer window. Silva largely kept his counsel after these setbacks and signed a contract extension at Craven Cottage in October, but told Portuguese newspaper A Bola:
It doesn’t serve as an excuse, but it wasn’t a normal pre-season. I made it clear to the [Fulham] officials that I wasn’t happy at the time because what happened in pre-season wasn’t normal. It was a consequence of the previous season, of the great success that this club had. Possibly, in the history of the club, there had never been a summer with so many proposals, with so much harassment of our players.
There will be interest, of course, in some [of our] players [in January]. If you ask me if I want to have the same feeling in the January window? Of course not
