On form Fulham still not at best despite Birmingham win

Marco Silva admitted that Fulham weren’t at their best despite thrashing Birmingham City 6-2 on Tuesday evening.

The Whites have scored 19 goals in the past week, and are five points clear at the top of the Championship table.

Despite being 4-1 up against the Blues at half-time, Fulham’s XG was only 0.85, which shows the clinical nature of their performance.

“It was a very good result for us,” said Silva. “Fantastic score again, [but it] was not our best performance.

“For us as a team, and for me as a manager, even if we don’t perform at our best level, we showed the capacity to create chances, score goals, and to have some very good attacking moments and show our quality.

“The players understand for this game the ways we want to attack our opponent. Of course, moments that you are winning 4-1, 5-2, I expect to control the ball better, manage the ball better, move the ball quicker, make them run back to the ball.

“The changes I made during the match were to control the ball better. For all these games in a row, we have not enough time to rest in between matches.

“If you have better control of the ball during the game you can rest during some matches with these kind of scores.

“We cannot concede the two goals in the way that we do. In some moments we should play our way, our game.

“The other times, we have to play the other part of the game. We have to be a bit more ugly, a bit more aggressive.

“The way we concede the second goal, the first goal as well, we have to improve in these kinds of situations.”

PICTURE: KEITH GILLARD