Fulham manager MMarco Silva is under no illusions regarding Fulham's struggles against Manchester City in recent history, but insists every fixture is an opportunity to reverse our fortunes.
We are pointless in 16 Premier League meetings with Wednesday’s opponents, but Silva knows that does not make our next encounter a foregone conclusion by any means.
“It's very bad,” our Head Coach admitted. “Not just Fulham, myself as well. It’s a bad record, definitely – the facts are there. But, every time you play, is another chance for you to change it, simple as that.
“When the facts are so clear, you cannot say nothing really different than that. Okay, can talk about specific things and moments in games, I can speak about from the moment that I joined the football club until now, but it’s not necessary.
“The facts are there, the numbers are there, it’s a bad record from ourselves, and every time we play is a chance for us to change it. That is football, football is like that.
“My focus really is to prepare the players and our team well to face City in the best way we can in a tough game.”
City will go into the match with their tails up, after a late turnaround on Sunday saw them break a hoodoo of their own away to Liverpool.
It was the first time they’d won in front of fans at Anfield since 2003, and means that another victory on Wednesday would see them close the gap on leaders Arsenal to just three points.
“As they proved yesterday, they are back, they want to fight until the end,” Silva said. “You saw the way they reacted, the way they celebrated in the end, showed how much they want to keep fighting until the end of the Premier League.
“But we have our goals as well, and we want to fight. And, of course, it's going to be a game that is going to demand very high standards from ourselves.
“To come back and score at Anfield the way they did, and be able to react last 10 minutes and change the result for them, probably one of the toughest places for City in terms of records, for Pep [Guardiola] as well, at Anfield, and they were able to break that bad record for them, and win a football match that was so important for them.
“It’s going to be a City full of motivation to try to get the three points, but we want to bounce back from the last game as well, from the last defeat, and we have to go to match them and to play our game and to have a plan behind the game that can allow us to fight for the three points.”