Marco Silva has hailed Kieran McKenna and Ipswich Town for their ‘unbelievable winning mentality’ and warned his Fulham side to expect a serious examination at Portman Road on Saturday.
The newly-promoted outfit might have lost their first two top flight fixtures and gone out of the League Cup to League Two AFC Wimbledon last night, but the Fulham head coach insisted he would not be taking the challenge lightly ahead of the trip to East Anglia.
Silva told his pre-match press conference at Motspur Park this afternoon:
“I expect a really tough game. They have an unbelievable winning mentality from the last two seasons. When you are promoted the way they were from League One to the Championship, and then Championship to the Premier League, I have to say that is unbelievable.
They’ve played two really tough games against Liverpool and Manchester City but the first game of the season was a really tough one for Liverpool; the way they played, the atmosphere. It was a solid start for them except for the result. They made life difficult for Liverpool and they started the game with the right intensity, mentality and doing everything to win the game. Since then, they have made very good signings that will probably be in the squad and maybe the starting eleven. It’s another chance for them to play at home. The environment will be the same – really big support for the home side and it’ll be a tough game.
They really trust in their philosophy and process. They’ve been really successful in the last two seasons and I think they will continue in the same way. We need to be at our best level to make life really difficult for them and we need to keep improving, because there is big room for us to improve in certain aspects of the game and we need to show that.”
The Portuguese boss revealed that he feels more comfortable with the depth of his squad after watching Fulham’s second string see off Birmingham on Tuesday night.
“We needed that game in the middle of the week. It’s always tough when you change the [entire] eleven from one game to the other, but the individual quality was there from almost all of the players. It was a good test for us off the ball as they created different problems for us with the energy they played with. We were able to be solid, which was a good sign. It’s good news to have all the players available.
Ryan [Sessegnon] is in a different situation. He needs these games to get in the right shape. It was amazing to see him play 95 minutes in the game. His connection with the fans is so crucial for him and it was great to see him on the pitch at the end with zero problems and training again today. Joachim [Andersen] doesn’t need those types of games as he was playing at [Crystal] Palace. It was important for Jorge to get his first feeling of English football and Sander [Berge] needs minutes.
