Fulham USA: US Supporters club of Fulham FC

With a third of the 2021-22 Championship season behind us it is a good time to take stock of where Fulham is and what it might be able to achieve over the remainder of the season.

Fulham is having its best season since winning the league in 2000-01 when they started with 11 straight wins. That year Fulham earned 101 points with a 10 point margin over second place. In 2021 Fulham is still six points behind where 2000 Fulham was at this point in the season, but Fulham is nine points ahead of where they were in 2019 and 18 points ahead of where they were in 2017 when they eventually missed automatic promotion by just 2 points. This season is clearly the first in a long time that Fulham can reasonably talk about automatic promotion before January.

Looking back at the history of automatic promotion since that 2000-01 season, we can see some clear patterns. The average number of points for the league winner is 94 and every team that earned 94 points or more has won the league. The average...

I suppose it was fate that reinforced our yoyotude relegation, but there were mitigating circumstances -- and I believe it was these circumstances that doomed us from the beginning. Here's some highlights ... lowlights that contributed to our demise.

1. Not finishing second ... Because of the reduced off-season [thanks to operation re-start] we missed several weeks of scouting/signing. By the time we actually won promotion, I'd say about 75% of the players who could have helped us were off the market. Had we not required the playoffs, those two-three weeks of active recruitment could have gleaned us the 2-3 midfielders/strikers we needed. Remember, this was a once in a lifetime weirdness that only really damaged Fulham. Finishing second and avoiding the playoff cone of uncertainty and we're competitive in the market. No COVID and the resulting short off-season, and we're competitive in the market.
2. Olivier Giroud ... Lampard didn't know what to do with him. He wanted to use...

The View From South Texas – how the game is played

I watch a LOT of football – Championship, Bundesliga, Premier League – and I’m learning more about the game all the time. What follows finally kicked in when I watched Borussia Dortmund host Bayern Munich after the season re-start. What I finally realized watching that match, got me looking elsewhere to find similarities – and I found them.

Dortmund had a slight chance of overtaking Bayern before the match was played. Had they taken all three points at home, they’d have been only 1 point behind in second place. Bayern won and the gap expanded to 7 and that was that. Now, you could say that Bayern are the better team – and they are. You could say that Marco Reus’ injury hurt Dortmund – and it certainly did. You might even say that the lost wasn’t a rollover because they held Bayern to only one goal. You’d be right about that. I told myself at the time that had Lewandowski been injured and Reus been healthy, Dortmund might have won...