Speaking before Saturday’s trip to Stoke, manager Marco Silva looked as relaxed as you would imagine, preaching respect, focus and recognition of the feted “good moment.” He is not interested in breaking records, just achieving promotion. Only when that is achieved (and whatever he might say it looks like a ‘when’ not an ‘if’) will he discuss what Fulham need to avoid another yo-yo season.

“This will be a conversation for us to have in the future. It will be a long conversation, for sure,” he said. “We do nothing for next year, we just do for tomorrow and the next match, and all the other matches that will come. Our focus is Stoke, working behind the scenes with our squad until the end of the January window and nothing more.”

Leaving aside an unhappy end to his time at Everton, he remains a convincing modern manager, serious in tone, thorough in approach. He has seized the flair in his squad, in contrast to Scott Parker’s more cautious style last season which had the unfortunate combination of dreary to watch and easy to beat.

Has Silva been able to savour the experience recently? “I’m not the type of manager that will be on the touchline and relaxed, I have a different way. I am not the most relaxed or the most expressive guy. I want to see always good things on the pitch. I want to see things that we have planned, that we have worked on on a daily basis on the training ground.”