This afternoon we welcome Marco Silva and his Fulham squad to St. James’ Park.

Marco’s teams are always well organised, well coached and a dangerous proposition, so we know what a difficult match we have on our hands today.

It’s fair to say our last home game against Arsenal was a day of mixed emotions. We started the match on the front foot and deservedly took the lead towards the end of the first half when Nick Woltemade capped off an excellent move to score his second goal for us. We continued to cause Arsenal problems for the remainder of the half and for most of the second, without adding to our lead.

Arsenal’s quality means they are always capable of finding a way back into a match, and while I didn’t feel we were at our fluent best, the players worked incredibly hard to protect the lead. So to lose two late goals was so disappointing and out of context in a game where we felt our efforts deserved much more.

A few days later, we returned to Champions League action and travelled to Brussels to face the Belgian champions and league leaders, Union Saint-Gilloise. From the first minute we looked a threat and were rewarded early on when another goal from Nick gave us the lead our possession deserved. We continued to push for more and added a second when Anthony Gordon converted a penalty just before the break.

We picked up where we left off in the second half and Anthony scored a second from the spot, before Harvey Barnes got our fourth goal late on.

We looked likely to score every time we attacked, we shared the goals around the team, we secured another clean sheet – our seventh in 12 matches – and achieved it all against a really strong team.

With attention quickly returning to the Premier League, we also know that we need to back the result up with another good performance today. To do so we will need to show the same qualities and attitude, and we’ll also need all of your help once again. The atmosphere you created against Benfica made it another of those special nights in our club’s history, and there is no doubt the players fed off the energy in the stadium.

Please continue to get behind us from the first minute to the last and be the extra man as you always are, and we will do our very best to reward your incredible support.