Fulham coach Marco Silva is paying little attention to West Ham’s short turnaround time going into Sunday’s meeting at London Stadium.
After a gritty and hard working display, two late goals condemned the Irons to defeat in their Europa League Quarter-Final away to Bayer Leverkusen on Thursday night.
But the Fulham Head Coach expects to come up against a side who will have more than enough motivation to deal with any fatigue.
“[They’re] a team that wants a response from the last game, like us,” he said. “A team that is fighting to be in Europe again, and their position during the table, they want to probably to climb up or keep their place.
“That is what I'm thinking, I’m not going to prepare a game thinking if they are going to be tired or not.
“They want to fight to win the game, for sure. They're playing at home with a big, big support, and it’s going to be in that direction that we're going to prepare the game.
“We go to play against a very good side that the last three seasons in a row arrived in the Quarter-Finals of European competition, one of them they won [the whole competition].
“Right now, they’re in a position to be fighting to be in Europe again, in a very good position in the table.
“I don't need to talk about the individual quality they have, the experienced manager that they have as well. I don't need to go in this direction.
“Just see what they have been doing the last few seasons, even in European competitions. We really have to reach our best level to match them and to fight for the three points.”
In the reverse fixture, Fulham claimed a 5-0 victory at the Cottage, our second result by that margin of the week, having done the same to Nottingham Forest four days earlier.
But Silva pointed to our recent trip to Nottingham as to why we can’t glean anything from our previous meeting with the Hammers.
“The result is not going to have any impact on [Sunday],” he explained. “We all follow the Premier League, we are living this competition and it's really tough for any club to win a game – imagine winning 5-0.
“It was a moment that happened – okay, credit for ourselves, for our players, the way we did it. If it's difficult to win a football match, imagine winning 5-0 back-to-back. It’s clearly much more difficult, and unusual as well, but we are not going to think about that result.
“I think the best example… we won against Forest as well with a clear result. And one week ago we went to Forest and our performance was not good enough, we didn't reach the level that we should, and we lost the game.”