Silva dedicates Fulham win to Parish family

Fulham boss Marco Silva dedicated his side’s 3-0 win over Millwall to the family of Paul Parish.

The Whites fan died after suffering a cardiac arrest during the recent home match against Blackpool.

Silva and his players went over to Mr Parish’s family in the Hammersmith End at the end of Tuesday evening’s game and presented them with the shirt of skipper Tom Cairney.

“It was the minimum we could do give them the shirt of our captain and be with them,” Silva said.

“We are here to offer the maximum we can to support them. It was the minimum we could do for them and it was emotional for us.

“When we heard that evening Paul had died it was the most sad moment of the season because a football match is a football match; everything else in our lives is the most important thing.

“We knew with this match, play well or not, we had to win and give a good feeling for the family after the terrible thing that happened here.

“They were able to come here again and sit in their same place. They are part of this football club.”

Two goals from Aleksandar Mitrovic and a late Bobby De Cordova-Reid strike secured a win that took the Whites eight points clear at the top of the Championship, but Millwall did cause the hosts some problems and should have scored at least two goals.

“We knew it would be an emotional match for us considering what happened 10 days ago. I don’t know if at the beginning of the match we were a bit nervous,” Silva said.

“But we started to come into the game and we created moments for our full-backs to start to drive forward. We showed some good quality to score the first goal.

“After the second goal we dropped our intensity and they could have scored with two big chances, and we need to improve in those kind of situations.”