Marco Silva knows Fulham will face a Sheffield United side scrapping for their lives when the Premier League programme resumes on Saturday – but insists his side are ‘full of motivation’ for the final few weeks of the domestic season.
Silva told his pre-match press conference at Motspur Park this afternoon that he expects a tough game at Brammall Lane on Saturday.
“[They are] a team that is going to fight really hard to get the points, definitely. They are not in the position that they wanted, for sure. When you are at the bottom of the table, it’s really tough, and every single game that you don’t get points you know that you are getting more in trouble, all that stuff.
But the reality is that, with some tough games, even some tough results as well, heavy results for them, they have been showing the capacity to react, and the last game is a good example. They went away from home, a tough place to go, and they were winning the game until the last stages of the match. They got just one point but it was a game where they performed well, they changed their formation, they changed some players as well.
So of course we expect a tough game, it’s always tough to play there, with the crowd, all the environment around.
They are going to fight really hard because they still think that the chances are there for them to fight for, and they are going to do it to make it really hard for us.”
Silva dismissed the suggestion that Fulham have very little to play for in the closing weeks of the campaign – revealing that he wants to better last season’s tenth place finish.
“Full of motivation. You have some obligations, some things that are compulsory for us – it’s about motivation, about desire and will to go every single time. Our commitment with the football club and with ourselves is to be always on the top, and it’s going to be the same for us every time we play a football match. It’s to do our maximum, with 100 per cent motivation. That is the way that I demand them to train every single day, and it would not make sense if we don’t do that in the game again.”
