Fulham manager Marco Silva played down the suggestion that Saturday’s meeting with Wolverhampton Wanderers is a ‘must-win’ fixture.
Fulham have lost our last four Premier League matches, while our opponents are the only side in the division yet to taste victory, but Silva approaches every match with the intention of earning three points, regardless of the opponent.
“I think it’s too early to start to talk about whether games are must-win games or not,” he said in his pre-match press conference. “For us, we prepare ourselves to win all the games. And this one is not going to be different.
“When we prepare games, we don't look for the position. ‘Okay, we're going to play team A, B, C, or D, and they are in this position, we have to win. They are in that position, we cannot win.’ We don't go in this direction at all. I think since I joined this football club, we have been showing that.
“Okay, if you arrive in a certain stage of the season, and depending what you are going to be fighting for, and you play against a rival or something like that, you can mention, and you can go in this [must-win] direction.
“Right now, it’s a game at home, we come from a bad result away from home, and we want to win the game. Simple as that. We are going to do our best, we know that we have to perform at a very good level to win the game.
“We know that we have to avoid things that we have been punished by in the last few games as well. Our fans as well, we have to engage the fans to go with us, like we have been doing at the Cottage every single time, and away from home.
“It’s a football match that we are going to do our maximum to win, I’m 100 per cent sure.”