Marco Silva seems to be making his excuses early ahead of this weekend’s visit to Tyneside!
The Fulham boss was speaking to the media ahead of Sunday’s game and was keen to let everyone in attendance know of the ‘unfair advantage’ that the Toon will enjoy with extra rest time.
Fulham are enjoying a fabulous return to the Premier League this season, with Thursday night’s impressive victory over Chelsea moving the London side up to the lofty heights of sixth in the table. However, it is the quick turnaround from that Chelsea game that has irked their Portuguese boss.
“It isn’t fair for us to start that game at 2pm on Sunday, not because [how] the game will be, more because the way the way they scheduled the game against Chelsea for the Thursday night,” Silva said.
“It’s difficult to understand after a so busy period after the World Cup. That wasn’t scheduled, they decide to put our game against Chelsea on a Thursday night, two days before the Newcastle match.
“It will be difficult, we finished a game at 10pm last [Thursday] night then we’re going to start the game at 2pm [Sunday]. It is not taking care of the players, I know that the Premier League is tough for everyone but it’s really dangerous for the players that they are going to start the game again at 2pm.
“It is not fair for us to have such a different time from Newcastle to prepare for this game. It’s not about Newcastle, it’s more about the game that was scheduled against Chelsea.” [via Shields Gazette]
Asked if this would give Newcastle an unfair advantage come Sunday, Silva added:
“Yes but it’s not their fault at all.
“Our game against Newcastle is there from the beginning of the season, it’s more about why the game against Chelsea was scheduled [Thursday] night, in my opinion, that is not fair.”
Just four points now separate the Magpies and Fulham, although we do have the advantage of a game in hand. Newcastle were easy 4-1 winners over Sunday’s rivals at Craven Cottage earlier in the season and will be confident of a repeat performance that would extend their unbeaten run to 14.
One big talking point of Sunday’s fixture will be the return to Tyneside of Fulham’s main man, Aleksandar Mitrovic. The big Serb played 65 times for Newcastle between 2015 and 2018, but only managed 14 goals in an underwhelming period at St James’.
Since then, he has turned into a goal machine for Fulham, scoring over 100 goals – including a record-breaking 43 in last season’s Championship winning performance. It will be interesting to see if he will bring his goal-scoring boots on Sunday.
Hopefully, he will wear the same pair he wore when pulling on the black and white jersey!