Marco Silva admits Aleksandar Mitrovic can do no wrong at the moment after the Fulham striker’s hat-trick secured his side a 3-0 Championship victory over West Brom at Craven Cottage.

Mitrovic made the most of a controversial penalty decision and a poor back pass from Robert Snodgrass to put Silva’s side two up at half-time in a game that ended with both sides reduced to 10 men.

He wrapped up the win in the 82nd minute with a close-range finish that took his season tally to 18 goals in 15 league games.

Mitrovic’s finishing proved the difference as Albion opened up a four-point gap on third-placed Albion who lost Darnell Furlong to a contentious 70th-minute red card.

Fulham boss Silva admitted the 85th dismissal of centre-back Tosin Adarabioyo for a poor challenge on Grady Diangana was the only downside as Mitrovic once again fired his side to victory.

Silva said: “Strikers that score 18 goals in 15 games, I think the numbers are there. They speak for themselves.

“Of course a striker cannot win games alone, but if you have a striker who has this capacity to score goals, we should keep creating for him.

“When a striker is scoring and scoring, I don’t need to speak to him. His job is done, I have to work on other things with him because his confidence is high.

“His team-mates are helping him and we have to keep the momentum. I’m pleased to see Mitro in a good mood, but also working hard as well.”

The opening goal arrived after 20 minutes when Mitrovic went down under a challenge from Kyle Bartley. West Brom were convinced the defender won the ball but referee Michael Salisbury thought otherwise and pointed to the penalty spot.

Then five minutes before the break, Mitrovic pounced on Snodgrass’ error to fire home.

Silva said: “It was fantastic work from the team, the way we won the ball for the first two goals.

“The second goal is something we are working on with Mitro. The way he switches on in that moment is really important for us because he can’t just be there to score goals.

“He is really important to us and is helping us to clean sheets as well.”

Furlong was sent off after 70 minutes for a challenge on Harry Wilson, although the Albion player protested he had made contact with the ball first.

And Mitrovic punished the 10-man visitors when he connected with Wilson’s cross to finish from close range.

West Brom have now suffered three-successive away defeats and manager Valerian Ismael focused his anger on his side’s mistakes rather than the contentious decisions.

The manager said: “I think that it’s the same story, week in week out away from home

“On the first goal, it’s a penalty, but just before the penalty we lost the ball to easily and I don’t want to speak about if it was a penalty or not because we lost the ball again.

“Mistakes are mistakes, I let you decide if it’s a penalty, but we had the ball just before the penalty and we need to avoid to lose the ball, we don’t need to talk about the decision.

“Bad game, we lost, it’s our fault, it’s as simple as that.

“Again a big mistake (for the second goal), the good thing is that we make the mistake now.

“It’s still a long way to go and the final game is in May and we have time to react and change, but we need to change that quickly.”