Marco Silva wants Fulham to be less reliant on Aleksandar Mitrovic goals

Aleksandar Mitrovic's 19 goals is seven more than the Championship's next highest scorer, Blackburn's Ben Brereton Diaz

Fulham head coach Marco Silva wants the rest of his squad to be less reliant on the goals of Aleksandar Mitrovic.

The Cottagers thrashed 10-man Blackburn 7-0 on Wednesday to close the gap on Championship leaders Bournemouth.

Mitrovic took his tally to 19 in 16 league games this season as Harry Wilson, Rodrigo Muniz and Neeskens Kebano all scored twice in the rout.

"It's really important that we start to spread our goals from the other players," Silva told BBC Radio London.

Mitrovic has scored nine goals in Fulham's last six games, including all three in the 3-0 win over West Bromwich Albion on Saturday and doubles against Nottingham Forest and Queens Park Rangers.

Before Wednesday big win at Ewood Park the Serbian had been solely responsible for half of Fulham's Championship goals, with Wilson the next closest with three before his double at Blackburn.

"When you have a player like him that creates so many chances and we have a player with his capacity and his ability to score goals of course he's important and he'll keep being really important for this football club," former Everton boss Silva, who took over from Scott Parker in the summer, said of Mitrovic.

"But I'm demanding from the others as well. My wingers normally score goals, and my midfielders as well, and they know that.

"Kebano, Rodrigo, Wilson, they know what I demand from them to take the right decisions, to attack, to score goals, to arrive in the right spots as well and they are offensive midfielders as well.

"Even our central defenders, they know how much I'm demanding from them, that we should start to score more goals from set pieces."

The Cottagers are now within two points of leaders Bournemouth after they were beaten 2-1 at home by Preston North End, with a four-point gap between the Londoners and third-placed West Brom.

Fulham are hoping to return to the Premier League at the first time of asking, having been relegated at the end of last season.

"The position in the table will always be a consequence of our performance. If we perform well, if you go to all the matches with the same ambitions, same aggressiveness, same intensity as well the results will be a consequence of our performance and the position in the table will be the same," added Silva.

"I want to be successful at the end of the season and to be successful we want to be top, and it's for that that we're working so far and we have to keep working.

"We've finished a third of the season, of course we are happy, but we have big room to keep improving, I know that."