From the press box: Marco says Muniz is in contention

Jack Kelly gives us the lowdown from Marco Silva's first press conference of the season.

Well well well, here we go again.

Another season is about to begin, which for me means I’ll be attending a minimum of 80 Marco Silva press conferences. One down, 79 (probably more) to go. I expected fireworks; not in terms of gesticulating and shouting, but some frustration from the Fulham boss. He delivered.

I turned up an hour early, prepped and ready. A little nervous, only because I knew that there were some key questions to be asked. I arrived and waited in reception, had a couple of nice off-the-cuff chats with Seth Ridgeon and Claire Green from the Fulham Women’s Supporters Club.

Once in the press conference room, I got chatting to the other reporters from Sky, Premier League Productions and BBC. I felt at home again, back in the familiar routine. Lots of polite footbally small talk while we waited for Marco.

Marco came in smiling, shaking hands with some of the reporters. I was at the back of the room, and I think he thought about coming all the way over to shake my hand, but realised we could just exchange a look and say “hi, nice to see you”. That was enough for me.

First question: team news. Standard, the way you should always start.

“We have a situation with Jedi. He had surgery. He's not ready, but good signs from him. Soon we will see him in contention. Sess - nothing serious. He was involved this morning, let's see how he reacts. All the others are in contention."

Then came the inevitable - transfers. Oh, horror. Oh, God. The elephant in the room. Two and a half months had led to this moment. My ears were open, my fingers were ready to tap.

"We had two moments in our plan. We had players we had to renew contracts, to build from there. It's not the ideal scenario. We have been too too too passive. I didn't expect it, but it's the market.

“We want to be better than last season. We haven't spent one penny on a player. He was a free agent player. To talk and ask about Europe, when we are not in an ideal situation - they are not connected."

Over the course of around 20 minutes, we had a pretty good idea of where Silva’s head was at. Like Joe Sansom’s, it was not on planet earth. He’s annoyed, he’s frustrated - and he made that clear.

One thing to note, as of yesterday at around 15:22 - Rodrigo Muniz is in contention to play against Brighton.

Fulham have another training session today (Friday), will we see the Brazilian in (hopefully) that green away shirt at the AmEx. A boy can Tim Dream.

I would recommend checking out my tweets that go live at 22:30 - more quotes from Silva from questions that I asked him. I was surprised to be the only written journalist in the room, so I had Silva all to myself!

It’s good to be back, I can’t wait until our trip down to the AmEx tomorrow. Back to the press box, hopefully eating a nice lunch whilst watching Aston Villa v Newcastle before being like I always am on opening day, a nervous wreck ahead of KO.

It was great to hear from Silva, let’s hope the next question I ask is “Marco, congratulations, three points on the opening day, what did you make of your team’s performance?’

Oh, come on Fulham.