I truly believe that Silva has hit "the wall" and there's no coming back from it until August. if I'm right there's nobody to blame but the Italian in charge. From the 05-06 season until now Silva had played 31 games, 45 games, 41 games, 45 games, 38 games, 39 games, 50 games (had 7 Spain games in '10-'11) but is already playing his 48th match in '11-'12 today and you still have 8 or 9 left...
asking a guy to play 10% more than he ever had before after playing in his career-high amount of games in previous year is a great way to break him down.
To manage at this level you have to know these things especially with the depth of squad he's inherited. And now 9 players have seen 30+ EPL matches (not counting their internationals, cup games, etc) while United still sit on 2 (Rooney and Evra)
Silva sort of reminds me of Bale last year. In february 2011 he was anointed player of the year but by May was barely an all-EPL choice...not surprisingly same thing is happening to him this year.