Portuguese newspaper A Bola today features an interview with Fulham boss Marco Silva.
Despite making clear he’s been pleased with pre-season so far, the manager nearly made the chat turn into an urge for his club to sign more players, almost like a message for the board sent via Portugal.
Silva started by saying Fulham don’t have enough players in their squad, claiming new additions are needed.
“The balance is positive, unfortunately for us, we are far from having the squad closed,” Marco Silva told Record.
“It’s clearly the only drawback, because pre-season is for that very purpose, to integrate everyone, work on principles and philosophy as well, but unfortunately, we have a small number of players and we did pre-season with practically 16, 17 players, which is very short.”
Then Silva started sounding more desperate for signings. He made it clear that the ideal plan would be to have the reinforcements ready for the start of the season, instead of waiting for the final days of the transfer window.
“We have a very good group, which had an excellent pre-season, it’s full of quality, but we need to be more competitive in the squad to prepare for the most difficult competition in the world, the best championship on the planet.
“We need to act faster, the market has been difficult for us, but we have to act faster, even so the pre-season has been very positive, the players have been giving their all, which is always important, and it’s good to integrate the new players. It’s part of a process, we started later than some of our opponents, but it was a positive pre-season.
“We have to have more reinforcements for when the Premier League starts, there is no other way, we still have a few players to sign and they are not that few. We know the market only closes on August 31st, but the Premier League starts on August 6th for us. We have to have more players to be at the level that the Premier League requires.”
Despite the many players Fulham have been linked with since promotion to the Premier League, they’ve so far only confirmed the arrival of Manor Solomon, from Shakhtar Donestk, on a loan deal; Andreas Pereira from Manchester United in a €9.5m transfer; and the biggest signing of the summer continues to be João Palhinha, who cost €20m when bought from Portuguese side Sporting.
