Silva looks broken at Fulham after slamming players for doing something they ‘never’ should

Marco Silva looked broken in his post-match press conference, wearily corroborating the claim from opposition manager David Moyes that Fulham had enjoyed roughly 20 minutes of control in an otherwise crushing visit to Everton.

He lamented how his Fulham side traditionally prides itself on being “competitive”, a quality borne out in how unlike almost every other team outside the elite – and many within it – the Cottagers’ games are rarely decided by more than two clear goals.

The last such occasion was 350 days and 37 games ago. The count might have been reset were it not for the three goals Everton had disallowed for offside at the Hill Dickinson Stadium.

Each were fair calls but that was hardly the point; the defending from Fulham was diabolical and Everton’s players straying slightly too far having sensed a wounded animal was far more fortune than it was part of any grand plan.

Silva bemoaned how his players “didn’t handle at all the physicality”, adding:

“You can lose football matches because the other team is better than you, but you cannot lose football matches because of the physicality of a football match. Never. You have to reach certain standards.”

Fulham, far too often this season, have failed to do so. Their away form is catastrophically poor – somehow worse than the managerless Wolves side against whom they recorded the one win in their last seven games.

And Silva seems to have no answer, admittedly hamstrung by a sub-optimal summer of recruitment but equally culpable of finding no solutions to myriad problems beyond perennially reappropriating Alex Iwobi.

A phenomenally gifted and intelligent player though he is, in such a fragmented, predictable and one-dimensional structure it cannot possibly work against a level of competence anywhere above that of the worst team in the league. No one individual on the pitch can overcome such systemic issues simply by being played in a different position, or be the panacea for all collective shortcomings.

Silva was right to call out his players for their work off the ball in particular – some ought to be ashamed that the manager commended 18-year-old Josh King for his ability to “handle the physicality” of his 19th Premier League game when other far more experienced heads failed to – and point out that “we got what we deserved”.

But it ultimately falls on the manager to right many of the wrongs that have crept into Fulham’s performances this season. His future has hung over the club like a dark cloud and it is time to find the Silva lining.