Fulham coach Marco Silva was in a reflective mood as he spoke to the press after his first defeat as Fulham boss on Saturday.
“We didn’t have a good enough performance from ourselves to win the game,” said Silva. “If you look at the chances, the game was balanced, more control from ourselves as normal, but we didn’t create enough chances and we didn’t perform in the way we needed to in this football match, that is the truth.
“We will now analyse why those things happened, why we started the game slow, why our build-up was so slow this afternoon.
“We have to play faster with more intensity to create the chances. Three or four times in the first half we created the chances, but we have to be more consistent during the game and not make mistakes like we did this afternoon.”
Talking about the winner on the day from Josh Bowler, Silva spoke honestly and frankly about where it went wrong and how he tried to make amends.
“It was our fault in that moment to concede that goal like we did,” our boss explained. “Of course, in that moment we must react, and we didn’t react in the way we wanted.
“After that we tried to change something from the bench, in the last 15 minutes we changed shape and formation to give a little bit more power.
“We had half chances in the second half but not clear chances to change the score for us.”
The international break perhaps came at a tricky time for Fulham with a rampant run of form being halted, but Silva was quick to quash any queries this had something to do with the defeat.
“We won’t make excuses, because if you want to have international players you know the schedule as well, and we have to go and challenge in the match,” Silva stated.
“I’m not thinking about the international break. We must do more during the game, and it’s not because of that (why we lost).
“Some players arrived midway through the week, some a little bit later, but that’s part of the game. If I decided to play some of them it’s because I felt they were ready.”
There were a couple of notable absentees from the Fulham XI with both Fabio Carvalho and Harry Wilson not quite fit enough be involved, and our Portuguese boss gave an update on both their situations.
“Of course, they are very important players for us," he said. “It’s different situations - Fabio because of his injury in the Hull City game, he did a big effort to play against Stoke but he felt it again the week after. We have to let him recover as much as possible, as fast as we can.
“Harry Wilson was because of his time with his national team, let’s see. Let’s hope he can play the next game.”