By the end of the 2018/19 season, Marco Silva’s stock was sky-high.
Everton had just finished eighth in the Premier League after a strong end to the campaign, narrowly missing out on a UEFA Europa League qualification place by three points.
There was new-fangled confidence in the team and the coaching staff from the fanbase, an element that is desperately absent from the Goodison Park crowd today.
However, within four months of the 2019/20 season, Silva’s reign unravelled at lightning speed.
His stock plummeted lower than a Bear Stearns hedge fund, and Farhad Moshiri’s ruinous manoeuvre dismissed the former Olympiacos boss.
Silva did not return to work again until the summer of 2021, when the newly relegated Championship side Fulham came calling.
The wounded 44-year-old rejected advances from Turkish giants Fenerbahçe to confirm his appointment to the dugout at Craven Cottage.
Silva still had a point to prove in English football, and he certainly has, as free-scoring Fulham have been promoted for the first time, playing some of the most scintillating and enchanting football in the country this season.
Unlike Bear Stearns, Silva’s stock is now on the up again, and so are the Lilywhites, who will play in the Premier League next season, this time hoping to keep the ship afloat for at least another year.
But how did Fulham manage to win the Championship relatively unscathed?
This article will be a tactical analysis of the Londoners under Marco Silva.
It will be an analysis of the tactics that were key to their early promotion.
Marco Silva Formation and Possession Style
Despite being an adopter and an advocate of Vitor Frade’s tactical periodisation model, made famous by the legendary Portuguese manager Jose Mourinho, Silva has been a proud proponent of the philosophy of the Spanish ‘juego de posicion’, more commonly known in England as positional play.
To play this style of football, a team needs to possess players with an abundance of technical quality.
The side must also be set up in a formation that provides numerous triangular passing connections, such as the 4-3-3, the 4-2-3-1, or the 3-4-3 diamond.
Silva has been an exponent of the 4-2-3-1 throughout his time in England, and this approach has not changed since his arrival in London, with the conventional structure deployed in 65 per cent of his games in charge so far in all competitions.
However, Fulham certainly have been no stranger to the 4-3-3 or its more conservative brother, the 4-1-4-1.
Teams that generally adhere to the positional play blueprint of football dominate possession.
