English Premier League: Is Fulham Already Doomed? 

It’s never a wise idea to pay too much attention to a football league table until at least five games into a season. During those early games, new players are still trying to find their feet with their new clubs. Managers are experimenting with formations. The rust that’s built up over a few weeks without football over the summer still needs shaking off. Strange results happen – and we’ve already seen that with the incredible glut of goals that has occurred over the opening few games of the English Premier League season. Nobody should look at the table after three games and make any predictions based on where teams are at that precise moment in time – except, possibly, in the case of Fulham. 

Fulham is a team that’s bounced in and out of the Premier League a few times now. Last time they went down to the Championship, they only stayed there for one season before coming straight back up through the playoffs, beating a plucky Brentford in the final at Wembley. On the day it happened, it seemed like a fantastic achievement for a club that hadn’t universally been fancied to come back up from the second tier at the first attempt. Looking at it now in the cold light of day, it might have happened a season too soon. Because of reasons that are outside of anyone’s control, the gap between last season starting and this one beginning was far shorter than normal and hasn’t allowed Fulham the chance to strengthen their Championship-quality side. Aside from making a couple of loan deals permanent, they haven’t brought in anyone of note whatsoever. The team doesn’t appear to be Premier League quality, and that shows in their results. Fulham has played three games, lost all three of them, and sit bottom of the table with a goal difference of minus seven. 

The most egregious of Fulham’s three defeats so far is their most recent. Nobody seriously expected the Cottagers to beat Arsenal on the opening day, even if losing 3-0 at home was a worse result than anyone expected. They might have been entitled to expect a draw away at Leeds United, but losing a thrilling game 4-3 was nothing to be ashamed of. The Villa game, however, was a disaster. Fulham was beaten 3-0 at Craven Cottage and looked utterly inferior in every way to their opponents from the Midlands. This is a Villa side that scraped Premier League survival by a whisker at the end of the 2019/2020 season. They’ve made small improvements over the summer, but not enough to justify this gulf in class. Losing to Arsenal at home isn’t the kind of result that gets you relegated. Losing to Aston Villa at home is. 

To his credit, Fulham owner Tony Khan took to Twitter in the immediate aftermath of the game to apologize to fans and promised to invest in new players to support the manager as quickly as possible. For some Fulham fans, that was enough. It didn’t satisfy everybody. Khan is a likable character and is far more willing to engage with fans than most owners, but he’s also a human being with a lot of plates to spin, and he only has as many hours in the day as the rest of us do. Aside from his interest in Fulham, he’s also responsible for the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team and the All Elite Wrestling promotion in the United States of America. Even if his intentions are good, having two ‘big league’ sports teams and a wrestling promotion to fund and manage is a drain on his time and resources, and he can’t be everywhere at once. Khan probably needs help with his schedule, but perhaps not as much help as Fulham manager Scott Parker needs. 

Parker, like his boss, is a likable figure. He says all the right things and carries himself with dignity and professionalism. He arguably overachieved by getting Fulham promoted at the first time of asking last season. That doesn’t mean that at this early stage in his managerial career he has the knowledge or experience to steer the club to safety in the Premier League, and the odds on him being the first managerial dismissal of the season become less favorable to his prospects of long-term employment after each defeat. He would desperately love to have new players to call on, but right now, he’s stuck with the small squad he has. The team’s only goal threat is Aleksander Mitrovic. Aboubakar Kamara doesn’t appear to have the necessary quality to back him up, and the midfield doesn’t have the cutting edge needed to supply the Serbian with ammunition. There’s little cover for the starting eleven, and you’d struggle to make a case for anyone in that starting eleven winning a place in the side of any team in the top half of the table. 

The financial difference between playing in the Premier League and playing in the Championship is enormous when it comes to television money and sponsorship, but the teams who thrive in the top flight speculate to accumulate. Investing is a gamble, but some gambles pay off. A player on an online slots website such as Dove Casino – or a successful player, at least – instinctively knows when to put money in and when to walk away. In this metaphor, Tony Khan owns the online slots website. It’s his to do with as he pleases. The Premier League has put money into it, and he now has to decide when and if he’s going to pay out. If an online slots game never pays out at all, people stop playing it. The time has come for Khan to spend some of that TV money and bring proven Premier League quality players in before the transfer window slams shut until January. Unfortunately for him, he only has a few days in which to do it. 

If Fulham is able to go out and buy three or four players within the next week, they might have a fighting chance of staying clear of the bottom three positions in the table at the end of the season. If they don’t, and they wait until January to bring in new personnel, it might already be too late. Teams that are bottom of the table at Christmas almost never escape relegation. It’s hard to imagine Fulham being anywhere other than bottom on that day if they don’t improve on what they have.