MARCO Silva admitted Fulham weren’t at their best in last night’s 1-0 FA Cup third round win over Rotherham.
The Whites boss made eight changes to the side which signed off 2023 with a memorable 2-1 triumph against Arsenal, hardly surprising with a huge Carabao Cup semi-final first leg coming up in midweek at Liverpool.
Bobby De Cordova-Reid scored the winner against the Gunners and repeated the trick last night with the only goal of the game on 24 minutes to sink Championship strugglers Rotherham.
Silva made full use of his squad and although it wasn’t exactly a thriller likely to live long in the memory, the bottom line is Fulham are in the fourth round.
He said: “When you make eight changes from one XI to the other, of course it always has an impact from a performance point of view.
“Of course, all the players that started, they have more than a capacity to start in the Premier League.
“They already did it, most of them that started tonight, but when you make eight changes there’s always an impact – the connections, the dynamic was not really the way I’d like to see.
“Of course, it was against a side that is defending really deep on the pitch – with that 5-3-2, always really deep on the pitch.”
Silva added: “We always had the possession, I think until the first goal probably more than 80 per cent of possession, but not many chances to be honest.
“But we scored, we created three or four chances to score more goals, and gave nothing for them.
“We deserve to be in the next round – a clean sheet is always important. I think we did control well their direct game, you know there will be long throw-ins in our box as well, all that stuff.
“From a defensive point of view, we did control well.
“In terms of performance, it wasn’t the best, but was enough to go through and to control really well the game.”
One of the changes made by Silva saw keeper Marek Rodak given the nod following three Carabao Cup appearances earlier in the campaign.
And as it turned out, Bernd Leno’s understudy was a virtual spectator against the Millers.
Silva added: “It was our obligation to control the game the way we did, to not give almost anything for them.
“I don’t remember one save from Marek, no shots on target from them.”
