Marco Silva says West Ham’s fitness levels will not have any impact on how he prepares for the match.

West Ham fans have been lucky enough to enjoy some of the most successful seasons in their clubs history. Three back-to-back seasons of European football and a piece of major silverware, it has been thrilling to watch.

Despite living the dream though, there are some drawbacks to playing in Europe. The most obvious one is the requirement for a big squad. Rotating players and being able to trust those that come in is absolutely key but, with the squad they have, that’s not something West Ham can really do.

A failure to bring in enough players over the last couple of windows has come back to bite. Injuries, suspensions and fatigue all have played a massive part in the Hammer’s season. However, Fulham manager Marco Silva does not see this as a chance to rotate players himself and expects his side to face a tough challenge at the London Stadium.

“West Ham is a team that wants a response from their last game, like us. A team that is fighting to be in Europe once again, and their position on the table, they want to probably climb up or keep their place,” he stated.

“That is what I’m thinking; I’m not going to prepare a game thinking if they are going to be tired or not. They want to fight to win the game, for sure. They’re playing at home with big, big support, and it’s going to be in that direction that we’re going to prepare the game.”

“We go to play against a very good side that the last three seasons in a row arrived in the Quarter-Finals of European competition, one of them they won.”

West Ham will be keen to get revenge on their London rivals for their 5-0 thrashing at Craven Cottage. With both Paqueta and Emerson suspended for the second leg against Bayer Leverkusen, you can expect them to both feature this weekend, but will David Moyes decide that it’s better to rest other players or whether he should focus on the league rather than the cup?