‘Best player on the pitch’… Marco Silva hails £3m Fulham player after huge Wolves win last night
Fulham manager Marco Silva has hailed the impact club captain Tom Cairney made against Wolves last night.
Silva was speaking to the club, via the club’s official website, after a huge Premier League win for the Whites.
Fulham went into the final international break of the year in poor form and needed a response yesterday after watching Bournemouth and Luton win beneath them in the table.
Without Joao Palhinha in the side, Marco Silva had to adapt his side and made a couple of changes.
Silva reintroduced Tom Cairney to the team and he controlled the game against Wolves brilliantly in midfield.
The £3m playmaker has been in and out of the team during the past 18 months, becoming an incredibly reliable super sub last season.However, he was fantastic from the first minute yesterday, winning the first penalty of the match and constantly drawing fouls with his exceptional close control.
He may only have one foot, but that left peg has brought plenty of fantastic memories for Fulham fans over the years.
Once again he was sensational last night and after performances like that, you have to wonder what level he could have reached were he not plagued with injury issues during Fulham’s first two Premier League spells.
Silva raves about Cairney after Wolves win
Talking about the 32-year-old, Silva said: “Very good performance, very good performance,” his Head Coach said. “I think he was the best player on the pitch, and he deserves it. It was a very good performance tonight.
“He started because he’s showing to me in the training sessions that he deserves the chance and deserves the moment to start.
“It was a game that I knew that we are going to need more calm because we are not in a moment full of confidence. We are going to need more calm on the ball, and I know what Tom Cairney can give us in these type of moments.
“When you play with Willian, Alex, Andreas Pereira and Tom Cairney behind the striker, it was clear what we wanted for the game. I knew that we were going to have ball, and I wanted much better decisions, because I knew that it’s going to be important for us to have some control.
“We did better second half, and Tom Cairney was a really important piece on that.”
Silva will have a tough time dropping Cairney for Sunday’s match against Liverpool following his performance against Wolves yesterday.
He seems to get the very best out of Willian sitting in the left-hand side half space, bouncing passes off the Brazilian before finding space elsewhere.
Cairney isn’t going to make too many line-breaking runs but his balance and ability to read a game make him a fantastic asset to the team.
While some players looked a bit rusty after the international break, the three-time Scottish international looked fresh as a daisy and ready for a relentless Christmas fixture period.
That’s after he survived an elbow from a teammate during one of the impressive training sessions Silva was talking about.
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