Is Marco Silva a man out of time?

Do we need to reframe the way we play football - and does that mean parting ways with our manager?

Credit: IMAGO/News Images

“To murder my love is a crime, but will you still love a man out of time? - Elvis Costello, Imperial Bedroom

Recently, I came across a chart that I found concerning. I’m republishing here with a link to the article in which it appeared (which I recommend reading).

What the chart shows, based on the two dimensions of direct speed and passes per sequence, is that Fulham - with a payroll of £77m - under Marco Silva is playing the same style of football as Man City, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool. Clubs with payrolls (not including bonuses) of £235m, £185m, £144m, and £177m respectively.

The question is, given new SCR rules and if Fulham truly want to take the next step, can we afford to keep on trying to play like Man City, Arsenal and Liverpool with a budget half the size?

The other thing you can notice from the chart above is the non-big six Premier League teams with similar budgets to Fulham that are ahead of us in the table, namely Bournemouth, Brentford and Everton, are all grouped together on the other side of the chart. They play direct and fast and not slow and intricate football.

One could argue that perhaps Fulham has found a market inefficiency and is purposely not competing for players with other mid-table clubs. But, I actually think the opposite is happening. Fulham - because of its style of play - needs to compete with the likes of Man City to get the midfielders and wingers you need to make a “slow and intricate” style of play work in the present day Premier League, while other teams seem to have realized it is cheaper and more practical to buy, direct and fast players.

And, because of SCR, Fulham will no longer be able to afford buying highly skilled older Premier Leaguers, we may soon find it more and more difficult to get the personnel needed to make this approach work.

Marco don’t press

I am a Marco Silva person. I love the guy. He’s been amazing for Fulham and I’ve wanted us to keep him. And, when I started writing this piece, I was simply trying to better understand how we played under Marco and so started looking at Opta and, as I said above, what I found gave me pause.

For example, did you know that Marco doesn’t really press (and has not for a few seasons)? Fulham is last in the league in terms of sequences pressed (per game).

Now pressing is down overall in the Premier League but it is notable how seldom Fulham presses.

And, as we don’t have the best players for slow and intricate play, like Man City or Arsenal, and don’t have a system designed to take advantage of quick turnovers or direct speed (that come from pressing or other types of more direct play), it means that we can, and often do, struggle to get the ball into the final third in a good position to score.

As a result, Fulham ends up generating a lot of low value shots when we do get into the final third. This is evidenced by Fulham’s relatively low xG per shot. Because, by the time we do get the ball into the final third, we are often trying to take a shot against a settled defense.

When you look at the impact of Fulham’s slow direct play along with xG per shot, you can see that Fulham ends up far away from the likes of Man City and Chelsea because we lack the talent to consistently produce high value shots from slow intricate play.

And, while we do better than other teams, like Villa, on this score, we don’t have lots of players that can convert low xG shots into goals (apart from Wilson) while teams like Villa have many that can do this (not surprising given their £143m payroll).

Fulham, because we don’t have ways to go direct and fast and because we don’t have elite midfielders and wingers, needs to rely on other ways to get the ball in the final third and score.

So, we put in a lot of crosses and do other things like bring in Joachim Andersen, who is very good at making long passes into the final third. We have also tried to add more speed and dribbling on the wings to give us more threat when our slow and intricate play does get the ball near the goal (with the addition of Kevin and Chukwueze, for example).

Perhaps, one of the reasons why Fulham have often struggled to win later in the season is tied to this style of play. Our skill players are older (e.g. Tom Cairney) and can and do wear down. Additionally, we necessarily have a more limited bench than other teams because of our financial situation.

So, we get stuck trying to make Silva’s system work with Harrison Reed in the midfield. This means that it gets harder for Fulham to, with its slow and intricate type of play, to get the ball into advantageous situations later in the season. It also makes it easier for other teams to stop us from doing so (when we are worn down and playing with less than ideal personnel).

And, I worry that Marco’s insistence on pushing forward with his slow and intricate system even when the team doesn’t have the players to execute it is wearing thin with our players.

Sometimes, like against Arsenal, it seems like the team just shrugs and gives up even though they are professionals and clearly want to win. Yes, Silva still is passionate and encourages them to “be brave” but it seems likely that Harrison knows he is not going to beat Declan Rice on the ball no matter how brave he is. And, the rest of the team also knows that they can’t “Man City” top competition when they are outmanned even if they really, really want to.

Where do we all go from here?

I wonder if one of the reasons why Marco hasn’t left Fulham is because, in reality, his style of play is mainly attractive to a very small, elite group of teams in the Premier League that have the financial means to make it work.

He is not a good fit for other teams with budgetary limitations who don’t want to play “slow and intricate” football with limited talent. So, as others have noted, if he does want champion league football, he’s likely going to need to go Europe where his modified possession-oriented style of play is a better fit and easier to execute. I hope Marco gets his wish. He deserves it.

I also now hope that Fulham will move on from Marco because I don’t think it is likely that his style of play will get us to the next level with the new financial restraints.

Yes, I do enjoy our attractive style of football and worry that many of the players he’s recruited are going to possibly be bad fits in a new more direct system but waiting longer to make a change is not going to make things easier. Because, unfortunately, it does look like Marco Silva might just be a man out of time.