Fulham manager Marco Silva was asked if having ended 2025 with three consecutive Premier League wins, is there a positive atmosphere around Motspur Park right now?
“Definitely,” Marco Silva confirmed in his pre-Crystal Palace press conference. “Of course, if you are winning games – and tough games – and the team is reacting very, very, very well, you can understand that, and you can realise that the mood is different.
“Our faces, they don't lie. No one was so, so down before that, like no one is over the moon [now], but of course we are satisfied with the reaction of the team.
“Some players have been playing and reacting well. Others, they have to give another step forward to keep showing their quality.
“But the main thing for us is about the unit, is about the group, and all the group is reacting very, very well for all the circumstances that the Premier League is showing to you.
“About ourselves as a group, they have been very, very good, and let's hope that tomorrow we can perform again, we can be that focused, a team that shows our organisation, and wait for the quality and inspiration of some of our players – it's always needed in a football match to be there in the top level.”
Conversely, Palace ended the year with three defeats in a row, while they haven’t tasted victory at Selhurst Park in a league game in two months.
But that isn’t something our Head Coach is reading too much into.
“It’s just an example of how football, and how the Premier League, is demanding,” he explained. “The margins between winning or not are so, so tight, so small, many small things can decide a game.
“I gave an example less than one month ago – we played against [Palace] at home, and everybody that was at the stadium analysing the game is not going to say that they deserved the three points. And they got it.
“Football is so, so tight, it’s so demanding, and I don't know the reason [for Palace’s form], I don't know, and it's not important for me to talk about it. Of course, we know that we are going to face a very good side, very physical side, very, very physical side.
“Home and away, they are slightly different. When they play away – and we have a good example of it last game that we played at home against them – they wait, they are much more in a low block and much more solid, and wait for the opposition to take all the risks.
“Playing home, they have to be slightly different. I recognise their quality, credit for them for the [year they’ve had in] 2025. It’s going to be another tough game for us.”