Boss Jokanovic plays down expectations at Fulham

Slavisa Jokanovic has tempered expectation at Fulham, insisting his side’s primary goal is to survive in the Premier League.

The Whites, who returned to the top flight by beating Aston Villa in last season’s Championship play-off final, have spent around £100m over the summer and brought 12 players to the club.

However, the Serbian sounded a cautious tone ahead of Saturday’s Premier League opener against Crystal Palace.

“We arrived last in the Premier League, our principle objective and target must be to stay up,” he said.

“We still haven’t started the competition and I prefer walking step-by-step. We will have more information after the first game, it is better to think this way and we will see our level at the end of the season.

“Our first target must be to stay up. We are starting to build a team to try and be competitive at this level.

“We came third in the Championship, we arrived here last and at it’s important and neccesary to show ambition and desire to be competitive and spend money to bring players who can help us.”

Jokanovic brought in a dozen players over the summer – five during Thursday’s deadline – as Jean Michael Seri, Maxime le Marchand, Fabri, Andre Schurrle, Aleksandar Mitrovic, Alfie Mawson, Calum Chambers, Sergio Rico, Joe Bryan, Luciano Vietto, Timothy Fosu-Mensah and Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa all arrived.

The head coach was happy to splash the cash – and would have carried on going if he could.

“It’s important to have investment, I always want more, more and more,” he said.

“For my position it’s normal to need players. The club needed we have made great investment and I expect it to benefit the club.

“It is normal, we arrived last in the Premier League and we need to adapt the team and make investments.

“We have made great investment and I expect this will help us to be more competitive in this division.”