Marco Silva wary of setting Fulham targets after fine start to season | OneFootball

Fulham sit sixth after winning three of their six first games

Marco Silva is not setting concrete targets for Fulham’s season after an impressive start to the campaign.

Fulham, who finished 13th last season, have won three and lost only one of their opening six Premier League games to sit sixth in the league ahead of Saturday’s trip to the Etihad to face defending champions Manchester City.

In the 2022/23 season, newly-promoted Fulham were tipped for an immediate return to the Championship but Silva instead masterminded a 10th-place finish.

Silva, who believes his side are better now than they were then, said: “I like to be ambitious and want us to grow. The Premier League is so demanding.

“You have the top six, but now you talk about the top eight and top nine. The competition is so hard every single week.”

Raul Jimenez has started the season in fine form

Action Images via Reuters

Fulham are currently in a European place, but Silva tempered expectations over what his side can achieve this season, adding: “We have to be there for the good moments but when the setbacks come you have to respond. But it is clear we want to do better than last season and that is our target.”

Fulham won 1-0 at Nottingham Forest last weekend through a Raul Jimenez penalty, but it later emerged that Andreas Pereira had been the designated penalty-taker before Jimenez insisted on taking the spot-kick instead.

“We have to wait for the matchday”, Silva said, when asked who Fulham’s regular penalty taker currently is. “We have some good penalty takers in our team and it is up to me to decide who is the taker.

“I can decide from one game to the other and if I have to change something then we would have already spoken about it. It was not something that was good to see. We have spoken about the moment already and we have sorted it.”