Fulham Are Back In The Premier League, This Time They Are Better-Placed To Stay There

Fulham have won promotion back to the Premier League with four games to go, and could effectively secure the Championship title this weekend against Bournemouth.

It is the London side’s third promotion to the Premier League in the last five years, but on the previous two occasions, they went straight back down to the Championship.

Both of those times, one of the sides replacing Fulham in the top flight was Norwich City, who themselves were relegated straight away in 2019/20 and will get relegated this season too. That has led some to suggest that these two sides are just swapping places each season.

But can Fulham break that yo-yo club cycle?

One thing that is in Fulham’s favor is that they are not Norwich City.

Norwich won the Championship emphatically in 2018/19 and 2020/21, winning 94 and 97 points, respectively. They then finished rock-bottom of the Premier League in 2019/20 and look like they’ll finish either bottom or second-from-bottom this season.

Fulham on the other hand won both of their previous promotions through the play-offs and looked rather unconvincing under Scott Parker when they last got promoted in 2019/20. This season though, they have dominated the Championship and look set to finish with more than 100 goals scored, something no team has done since Manchester City were last in England’s second tier.

In the past eight seasons, the only Championship winners to go straight back down have been Norwich. Going back further, Norwich are the only team in 17 years to win the Championship with more than 90 points and then get immediately relegated.

Winning automatic promotion gives Championship teams more time to prepare for the top flight than if they win the play-offs. Fulham can start planning their budget and looking for Premier League level additions to their squad right now, giving them more than a month’s head start over this season’s Championship play-off winners. Their team this year also seems better prepared for the Premier League and will certainly need fewer additions than in 2018 when Fulham tried to bring in effectively an entire new team.

Much has been made of Fulham’s Serbian international striker Aleksandar Mitrovic, and his inability in 2020/21 to convert his Championship form to Premier League goals. But that season when he only scored three Premier League goals looks likely to have been a one-off. After all, he scored 11 goals in his previous Premier League spell, and is now right at the peak of his career, scoring an incredible 40 goals in the Championship so far this season.

After six goals in his last six Premier League games, last season’s top scorer in the Championship, Ivan Toney has scored more Premier League goals than anybody outside Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur or Manchester United with 12 goals in 28 games so far this season, so while Toney has scored fewer than the 33 goals he scored last season (including the play-offs), he’s shown that players who score for fun in the Championship can make the step up to the Premier League if they get the right supply.

Fulham’s squad looks stronger than in previous promotion seasons, and in Marco Silva, Fulham have a manager who has proven he can get teams at the lower end of the Premier League to overachieve.

Hull City were rock-bottom of the league when he took over, but picked up 21 points from 18 games under Silva, which over the course of the season is mid-table form. At Watford, even after the poor run of form that led to his sacking, they were still at the giddy heights of 10th in the Premier League.

He also appears to have learned from his mistakes at Everton, who under his time in charge were the worst team in the league for defending set pieces. His set-piece defending was also a weakness at Hull and Watford, but this season Fulham have only conceded five goals from non-penalty set pieces while scoring 19 goals from set pieces themselves.

All that said, the gap between the Premier League and the Championship seems to get wider every season, with almost every Premier League side spending huge amounts on players every year. Even spending on the levels of Aston Villa and Everton doesn’t guarantee a place outside the bottom third of the league.

Fulham also have the task of replacing Fabio Carvalho. The 19-year-old has nine goals and seven assists and has been one of the Championship’s most exciting players this season, but will join Liverpool in the summer.

Fulham will have to spend a lot more wisely than they did after their two previous promotions if they want to stay up. But they have more time to find the right players, and their squad and manager are better prepared for the Premier League this time around.