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For a fifth straight season, Fulham is riding the promotion-relegation yo-yo.
The Cottagers secured a top-two finish in England’s Championship by virtue of their 3–0 win over Preston North End on Tuesday, thus clinching automatic promotion back to the Premier League with four games to spare. The achievement means that, barring moves elsewhere, two more U.S. internationals—Antonee Robinson and Tim Ream, though the latter is out of contract after this season—will be playing Premier League football in the run-up to the 2022 World Cup. It also nets Fulham another hefty financial windfall. Whether that will be enough to reinforce the club—and find a suitable replacement for talented 19-year-old attacking star Fábio Carvalho, who is expected to leave for Liverpool—and prevent it from suffering immediate relegation in 2022–23 remains to be seen. History is not on its side.
After being promoted in 2017–18 following a four-season run in the Championship, Fulham went right back down in ’18–19 only to rise back up following ’19–20 with its second playoff triumph in three seasons. Its return to the Premier League was short-lived once again, with relegation in ’20-21, but it proved resilient—and dominant—in the second tier this season, never truly having its latest promotion effort in any kind of jeopardy.
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Second-place Bournemouth, which trails by nine points and has a game in hand, is the only club left that can pass Fulham in the standings, and it’s among a handful of clubs who could wind up in the four-team playoff for the third promotion place later this spring. Nottingham Forest was the only other club within mathematical striking distance entering Tuesday, but it now trails by 16 points while only able to obtain a maximum of 15 the rest of the way.
Fulham’s deserving drive has been led by the record-setting efforts of Serbian international forward Aleksandar Mitrović, whose 40 goals (in 39 games) smashed the previous Championship record of 31, set by Brentford’s Ivan Toney last season. Fulham as a whole has been an attacking juggernaut under Marco Silva this season, scoring 98 goals through 42 games. The next-closest clubs are Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest, with 65 apiece.
As for which clubs Fulham could be replacing in the Premier League, two of Silva’s former employers are in the mix. Everton and Watford are among the four clubs most likely to go down, with the former currently three points clear (and with a game in hand) on 18th-place Burnley. Watford sits six points behind the Toffees in the hunt for safety, having played two games more, while Norwich City is in the most dire situation, seven points behind Everton while also having played two games more.
