'Massive' - Marco Silva on Leeds United's fans, Javi Gracia and his Whites difficulty for Fulham

Newly-promoted Fulham are flying high in sixth place in the Premier League table and the Cottagers host fourth-bottom Leeds this evening in the FA Cup fifth round. Fulham are 17 points ahead of Leeds but Silva expects the Whites to have been particularly boosted by Saturday’s 1-0 victory at home to Southampton in new Whites boss Javi Gracia’s first game in charge.

Gracia succeeded Silva as Watford boss following Silva’s sacking from the Hornets hotseat back in January 2018 and Silva says it is also now difficult to predict what sort of line up Gracia will select for this evening’s showdown in the last 16. Whoever steps out for the Whites, the Fulham boss has also acknowledged the level of support that the visiting Whites will recieve from the stands.

“As you know, it was just the first game for Javi last game,” said Silva at his pre-match press conference, as quoted by fulhamfc.com. “It's difficult to predict the way they are going to be, if they are going to change many players or not. I think even for them it's difficult to predict the type of players, or number of players they are going to change. But they are always going to be Leeds and probably even in a better mood, more confident after the massive win for them last Saturday.”

Silva added: "Full respect to Leeds, we know their capacity, what we're going to face tomorrow night, the support they are going to have again. We played against them in a different competition, the Carabao Cup, last season and we know what type of support they have in that situation. It will be a proper cup tie, in my opinion, two good teams that want to go through. It will be a tough match, but it is our aim to play in the Quarter-Final of the FA Cup.”