Marco Silva's Fulham team kick off the new Premier League season against Manchester United at Old Trafford; watch United vs Fulham on Friday Night Football from 6.30pm on Sky Sports Premier League and Main Event
Saturday 21 September 2024 10:50, UK
Marco Silva is glad to be back.
Fulham's Portuguese head coach, looking tanned and refreshed and with a spring in his step, has been a busy man this summer, despite trying to escape all the outside 'noise' while nipping back home for a family holiday.
This will be the 47-year-old's fourth season in charge down by the banks of the Thames, the longest at any club in his entire managerial career, with his decision to again reportedly reject the riches on offer in Saudi Arabia showing his unwavering commitment to establishing Fulham as a Premier League force.
And nothing says we are here to stay quite like opening a new stand with a swimming pool, as the Cottagers are set to do with their redeveloped Riverside Stand, with the top three floors comprising a 'Sky Deck' - a rooftop providing views of the London skyline, as well as that pool!
Pre-season results, meanwhile, were encouraging, with the squad having initially taken part in behind-closed-doors friendlies in London, before games in Portugal and Germany allowed new signings Ryan Sessegnon (back at the club after five years) and Emile Smith Rowe vital time to bed in.
However, attention now turns to the intriguing Friday Night Football clash at Old Trafford that kicks off the 2024/25 Premier League season, when Silva will hope his new arrivals hit the ground running, as they have done in past seasons, and his side can repeat their 2-1 win at Man Utd just six months ago.
The Fulham boss was "permanently in contact with the board" during his time away with his family this summer as he and director of football operations Tony Khan tried to replenish the squad following the key exits in the close season of what was in effect the spine of his team in Tosin Adarabioyo, Joao Palhinha, Bobby Decordova-Reid and Willian.
This, of course, is nothing new for Silva and Co, who have had to contend with losing MVPs like Fabio Carvalho and Aleksandar Mitrovic in recent summers, only to cope via some shrewd forays into the transfer market.
As well as the arrivals of Sessegnon and Smith Rowe, Spain Under-21 international defender Jorge Cuenca has also been brought in from Villarreal for an undisclosed fee following the exit of the experienced Tim Ream to Charlotte FC.
"It's the spine of the team," Silva said of those departures in an exclusive interview with Sky Sports. "You see the influence of Tosin in the way I want Fulham to play.
"Bobby Reid has been a great servant for this football club, always a player that can score goals in important moments of the season. And Willian, we know about his impact and quality, even if he's 36, but he was a key player for us in the last two seasons.
"It's not easy to find other clubs in the Premier League that lost four key players that normally are starting XI players. I don't know many others and it shows how it's going to be important for us to rebuild everything again.
"Two seasons ago, we lost our main striker, Aleksandar Mitrovic, with all the noise around that it's going to be impossible for us to survive without him.
"We were able to rebuild. We signed Raul [Jimenez] and we developed Rodrigo Muniz who is now at a very, very good level."
The loss of Palhinha to Bayern Munich, 12 months after the Portugal holding midfielder came within a whisker of joining the Bavarians, will be the hardest to absorb for the Cottagers, such was his influence on the team.
However, Silva knew he and the club could not again stand in his way of a dream move to the Allianz Arena, while he also takes huge credit for how he developed the player during two outstanding seasons in west London.
So much so that Fulham made a healthy profit on his sale, having bought Palhinha for just £20m, before selling him for £47.16m.
"It's tough for me as a coach to see them go, but at the same time, I'm proud of the work we did together," he said. "Three years ago, no one in Portugal, or here, expected to see Joao at Bayern Munich. The reality is that he worked really hard and his development in the Premier League was really quick.
"The season before was Mitrovic, the biggest sale for Fulham. After one year, the club broke the record. We are not just changing the football club on the pitch in terms of performance, in terms of position on the table, in terms of goals."
One player's departure, though, creates openings for others to step up, such as Sasa Lukic, who caught the eye when deputising for the suspended or injured Palhinha during the last two seasons.
"We have to move on," was a philosophical Silva's take on the loss of his compatriot. "Lukic is a player that did so well last season. He's one of the players that can play in that position and the competition is going to be hard for the position, which is what I want as a manager."
Looking ahead to the new campaign, Silva's mantra is simple: "Let's work hard to be better every single day and to develop individually and collectively as well."
That way, everything else will take care of itself, which is why he considers the previous season a success, despite statistics saying otherwise.
The Cottagers may have ended last season 13th in the table, picking up five fewer points than when finishing in tenth on their Premier League return the campaign before, but in the manager's eyes, the team was functioning better as a unit last time around.
"We were two points below tenth, where we finished the season before," Silva reasons. "Overall, looking at the season, I have to say that for us as a club, for me as a manager, for us as a group, it was better.
"Last season, everyone that was seeing our team playing identified us as a full-on football club and overall, performance-wise, we really took a step forward."
Evidence of that came in impressive victories against the likes of title-challenging Arsenal, as well as Champions League-chasing Tottenham and Man Utd, while they also came within minutes of beating Liverpool after a seven-goal thriller at Anfield in December.
In fact, that month saw the Cottagers produce their most vibrant attacking displays of the campaign as they recorded back-to-back 5-0 home wins against Nottingham Forest and West Ham, before fatally damaging Arsenal's championship hopes under the Cottage lights to welcome in the new year.
"I have to say, in some moments, some of the best football we ever played in the Premier League was last season," Silva said. "We had some great moments, really top moments.
I have to say, in some moments, some of the best football we ever played in the Premier League was last season.
"In some games, we were really the best team on the pitch, against very good sides as well. Of course, in terms of consistency, we were not as good as the season before, probably missing a little bit of depth in some moments when we had some injuries.
"But we took many steps forward, in my opinion, to be much more competitive against the top sides, to get points, to get important wins against top sides as well."
One area Silva and his coaching staff will no doubt be looking to improve on this campaign will be for the team to create more clear-cut openings for his forwards.
The Cottagers made just 69 'big' chances last season, the fourth fewest in the top flight, although as the Fulham boss explains, he is not a slave to statistics.
"I look to the stats, but I have to say they are not the main thing for me," Silva said. "There are many more important things than just the stats. I don't need to have all the stats month by month
"The first two months, in terms of chances created, were really tough for us, which probably played a big part in this statistic that you are telling me. But yes, all the teams want to create chances. We are not different and of course, it's something we have to look at."
Because if they do, in Muniz, who impressed while scoring nine Premier League goals last season - including a red-hot run of eight in eight during the Spring - they have the man to take them, starting at the 'Theatre of Dreams' on Friday night.
Silva says he and his players are relishing the chance to open the new season in front of a massive TV audience, just as they did two years ago when in their first game back in the Premier League, they gave Jurgen Klopp and Liverpool a real run for their money while drawing 2-2 at Craven Cottage.
"When you start the Premier League, it's always an emotional game," he said of the enticing FNF opener on Sky Sports. "Two seasons ago, we started at home against Liverpool. It made a big impact on our season because no one expected such a strong start from us.
"It's always important to start with a good result, but in the Premier League, it doesn't matter if it's home or away. If you start with a big game, it's probably even better. It will be a tough task for us, but it's going to be a good game for sure."
Fulham will travel north with nothing to fear, however, after their dramatic, but deserved victory at Old Trafford in February, while United have made slow starts under Erik ten Hag in both his two seasons in charge.
Silva, though, is quick to caution against reading too much into this with it being a brand-new season.
"It's different seasons, different moment of the season," he said. "We can't compare one game with another and it's always tough to play against Man Utd."
Either way, Fulham's players will no doubt take great confidence from the way they outrun, out-pressured and, generally, outfought their hosts at Old Trafford last season.
"We have to be ourselves and express ourselves," Silva said. "Of course, we have huge respect for them and the quality they have playing at home.
"But something we really built in our football club is that when we go to play football, we go to match any side that we play against and we go to try to win the three points.
"Last season, we won that game and it wasn't a surprise for anyone that saw that game, because we were clearly the best team on the pitch. We are going there to be Fulham FC again in our way, with more possession or less possession to try to play our way, to try to be Fulham on the pitch.
"And we are going to create a difficult game for Man Utd I'm sure."
With newly promoted Ipswich Town and Leicester City, as well as Forest and West Ham, who they thrashed last season, all to face before the end of September, Fulham have a real opportunity to get some early points on the board and make a better start than they managed last time around.
But only if Fulham's players continue to give everything and do not rest on their laurels, says Silva: "It's a new year, a new season, everything is going to be different.
"You have to go again and work really hard to have the type of performance that makes us a really tough team to play against."
Watch Man Utd vs Fulham on Friday Night Football from 6.30pm on Sky Sports Premier League and Main Event
