Marco Silva: Fulham didn’t meet 'certain standards' in defeat - ‘We're going to have serious conversations’

Fulham boss Marco Silva admitted his side fell well below the standard required in the Premier League after the Cottagers lost 3-1 to Nottingham Forest at the City Ground.

Goals from Callum Hudson-Odoi, Chris Wood and Morgan Gibbs-White put Forest 3-0 up at half-time, and although Fulham hit back through Tosin Adarabioyo shortly after the break, the damage was already done.

Asked for his assessment, Silva told TNT Sports: “[It was a] really disappointing evening, result, performance. And certain type of standards, they were not on the pitch first half. And when these things happen you are going to suffer.

“Of course, the reaction was there in the second half, it was already too late. The shift at half-time was clear but the damage was already too big.

“We knew we had to score an early goal, we did it and we did create chances to score the second and after the game would have been completely different, they did have some good moments as well I have to say.

“We were not clinical in attack but most of the things that went wrong for us was in the first half, we did not start the game at a decent level and you are going to be punished for that.

“We are going to be in the next few days to prepare for the next game [and have] more serious conversations about that because it’s the first time that happened for us.”

Such was Silva’s displeasure with the performance, he made a triple substitution just 33 minutes into the game, removing Alex Iwobi, Sasa Lukic and Harry Wilson with Fulham trailing 2-0.

TNT Sports commentator Martin Keown described it as a “public embarrassment” but worse was to come when Gibbs-White struck on the stroke of half-time to put Forest three goals to the good.

Discussing that decision and what was missing in the first 45 minutes, Silva said he would have taken off more players if he could.

“Not just one thing [was missing] unfortunately, there were many and it’s because of that the three players, they came off around 30 minutes into the game,” he added.

“It’s not the fault of the three players because if in that moment I could change more than the three I would change because it was clear we were too slow.

“In our situation too slow, not dynamic at all, not the right moves, not aggressive at all and teams in this league can punish you if you are too slow.”

While it was misery for Silva and Fulham, the result was a shot in the arm for Forest.

The hosts had won just once in the league this year prior to the visit of the Cottagers, with the three points taking them within a point of Everton in 16th and giving them some daylight to the relegation zone below.

“It was absolutely massive for us,” hailed Gibbs-White. “We had to go into this game going for it and wanting the three points, and I thought the first half the boys were incredible, the way we took our chances - we could have scored more.

“This team showed how resilient we were and hats off to the fans, they helped us tonight. We were building on last game second half and, we just wanted to come out strong and we’ve got to start doing that more often because you can see the talent in the squad, you can see what we can do so we just have to keep building on that.

“We were pretty faultless in the first half, but we knew Fulham would come out fighting so we just needed to keep together as a team, keep calm and we showed that.”

He added: “We haven’t always been too good when conceding goals recently but I think today showed how together this team really is. I’m just so proud of the boys and of the fans of sticking with us. They’ve been absolutely incredible for us.

“Today just showed how quality our team really is.”

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