Silva denies Fulham are coasting after comfortable season

Fulham boss Marco Silva insists his side have not downed tools after securing their Premier League safety.

The Whites visit Silva’s former club Everton on Saturday on the back of five successive defeats, including their FA Cup quarter-final loss to Manchester United, and have slipped to 10th in the table.

“I can understand people who are thinking this way, but I know the club and our players, how they react their character and personality, and it is not the reason at at all,” Silva said.

“If I thought it was something like that I would be the first one to stop it straightaway.”

Defeat against the relegation-threatened Toffees could see Fulham drop into the bottom half of the table for the first time this season.

But the Portuguese has not given up on the club’s push for Europe and believes it is a lack of confidence, not application, that has affected his side, who have made an impressive return to the Premier League.

“It’s part of football, sometimes when you do the right things confidence is at the top,” he said.

“But when you are not sometimes players do not have the maturity to be consistently at their best level.

“It is not a good run for us, definitely, it is not something we are used to this season or last, although that was in a different competition of course.

“It is something we are talking about and are working on and improving. Runs like this can happen at this level but the run that we had before we did so well and we were very pleased with it.

“Sometimes you have bad spells and bad runs and although you don’t want it to happen we have to work hard again to do the things we did so well after the World Cup break. But our aim is to be more consistent at this level.”

Fulham will still be without Aleksandar Mitrovic for the trip to Goodison Park as he serves the third game of his eight-match suspension.