How hard is Fulham’s early season?

Holding onto their place in the Premier League proved beyond Fulham last season, but with a new manager in place in Marco Silva, and much of their squad retained, they are ready to bounce back in the Championship. Silva and his players will, however, be wary of taking the Championship too lightly. This is a tough division and fancied teams that get off to a slow start can find it hard to recover. So how well prepared are Fulham, and how tough is their introduction?

Pieces in place

Aficionados of online betting in the UK make Fulham one of the favourites for promotion thanks to the combination of managerial reputation, a strong squad and plentiful resources. As a relegated side, Fulham will be entitled to a £40m parachute payment, which will go a long way towards giving them an advantage against teams that lack the same resources. 

Silva is an experienced and well-respected manager who is well placed to make the most of the funds at his disposal, though his squad is already impressively strong at this level. The retention of Aleksandar Mitrovic – who has scored 38 times in his last 57 Championship games, is a positive sign, as is the addition of Harry Wilson from Liverpool, while Chelsea’s Ruben Loftus-Cheek is also back, though still on loan from their West London rivals. 

Good start

So how easy will Fulham find their start to the campaign? The fixture list until mid-September looks manageable as the Cottagers will be taking on sides that finished mid-table or lower last season. The opening day fixture against Middlesbrough and a trip to Millwall for their third fixture will provide a solid challenge but sandwiched between them is a game against struggling Huddersfield. 

Following this will be a sequence of easier looking games. First up are newly promoted Hull, who are likely to be embroiled in a relegation battle thanks to their ongoing transfer restrictions. Games against an in-transition Stoke side, Blackpool and Birmingham City, should not prove too taxing for Silva’s players, and they have every chance of being in a strong league position come the middle of September. After that, however, things start to get trickier. 

Autumn challenge

When autumn gets into full swing, Fulham will face a sterner challenge. Between the middle of September and the end of October, they will take on five teams with serious promotion ambitions. 

On September 17th, the Cottagers will entertain Veljko Paunovic’s dangerous Reading side, and two games later will face last year’s play-off semi-finalists Swansea, who seem set to mount a serious challenge under their new manager Russell Martin. Going into October,  there’s a tricky West London derby with QPR, followed by an encounter with Mick McCarthy’s Cardiff, and the month ends with a home game against fellow relegated side West Bromwich Albion. 

The good news for Cottagers fans is that all five of these important games are at home, which should give Silva’s side an edge as they bid to establish their early season position. 

December trials

The month of December can often be make or break for teams and Fulham’s fixture list is particularly challenging to close out the year. They meet play-off finalists Bournemouth early in the month, followed by a potentially dangerous match against a Luton side they will be wary of underestimating. Three tough fixtures then complete the December schedule, as they meet the other relegated Premier League side Sheffield United, and play their return fixture against promotion contenders Reading and Swansea, both away from home. 

Trying to make up ground at this stage of the season, as fixture congestion, injuries and bad weather combine, can be tough, so Silva will be instilling in his players the importance of starting strong and making the most of their relatively straightforward early fixtures. 

Promotion prospects

Despite the fact that clubs newly relegated from the Premier League benefit from parachute payments and are often able to retain many players capable of playing in the top flight, the record of relegated sides in their first Championship season is not good. 

Over the last five seasons, only four of the 15 relegated teams have been able to bounce back and return to the Premier League at the first time of asking. However, Fulham will be able to draw on the experience of doing just that, during the 2019/20 season, when they won the play-off final, and with their current squad, they have every chance of repeating that achievement in 2022.