FULHAM manager Marco Silva admits his club’s busy schedule this week could be a factor when he names the starting XI to face Ipswich tomorrow in the Carabao Cup.
The Whites take on the Championship promotion contenders on the back of Sunday’s 1-1 draw at Brighton and before hosting Manchester United on Saturday lunchtime.
Silva has already rung the changes in earlier League Cup ties with Spurs and Norwich to successfully reach the fourth round, something which could well be on the cards at Portman Road.
He said: “It probably can happen.
“It’s not something new for us. If you look at the last two games that we played in the Carabao Cup, we did it.
“We look at the competition as a really good competition for us to always do our best to go through.
“It’s a slightly different scenario this week because we played last Sunday, we’re going to play on Wednesday and (have an) early kick-off on Saturday.”
Silva added: “It’s slightly different and we are going to prepare the team as best we can.
“We have to look at some players that have some risk of injury or something like that, because the time between games is really, really short.
“In some positions we can rotate because we have the solutions.
“Unfortunately, in the other positions because of some injured players, we don’t have so many solutions and we need to be careful about some players.”
Ipswich are chasing -back-to-back promotions under Kieran McKenna and will be looking to knock another Premier League club out of the Carabao Cup having already overcome Wolves 3-2 in round three.
Silva is a big fan of what the former Manchester United assistant boss has achieved so far in his first managerial position with the Tractor Boys, but is determined there will be no upset as he bids to lead Fulham one step closer to Wembley.
He said: “Their confidence is probably as high as possible and it’s going to be tough for us, but our run in the Carabao has been really good. We have been a really serious and ambitious team.
“We had two different games against Tottenham at home, where we did it really well.
“And against Norwich it was a proper Carabao Cup game, a tough game to play where we did well.
“We want to keep in the competition. It’s going to be tough and we have to do our best to go through.”
