Slavisa Jokanovic’s side play the kind of front-foot football that makes them welcome Championship play-off winnersThe deafening sound as Fulham celebrated promotion under the Wembley arch gave a whole new meaning to white noise, for Slavisa Jokanovic’s slow-burning, swaggering side had finally got over the line. A couple of months ago, Jokanovic had insisted that dreams were to be had in the bedroom but he woke with his team triumphant and many topless at the end of Fulham’s first game at the national stadium since 1975. His players, showered in gold confetti, guzzled champagne as they bounced on a hastily erected stage still feeling the effects of the mass pile-on at full-time. Related: Fulham promoted to Premier League after play-off...
This is where we all are at the moment, gushing at news that Fulham’s teenage wing-back can use a household applianceTo south-west London, where startling news emerged when Fulham’s Supporters Trust held its AGM on Tuesday. An awed hush fell over the room as Alistair Mackintosh, the club’s CEO, told an anecdote that left everyone wiping away the tears. On one occasion this season, Mackintosh revealed, Ryan Sessegnon had a doping test after a night game and by the time he was done everyone had gone, the kit man included. So Sessegnon took his kit home, washed it and ironed it before bringing it in the next day.The story ended there, leaving us to speculate whether Fulham saw fit to...
Slavisa Jokanovic’s men have history on their side but there are reasons to believe for Middlesbrough, Derby and Aston VillaSome teams flourish, some fret and some freeze but there is nothing quite like the pressure-cooker that is the Championship play-offs, where promotion and almost £200m are at stake. By June, one of four reasonable heavyweights – Aston Villa, Derby, Fulham or Middlesbrough – will be back in the Premier League.Four legs and a final, at Wembley, will decide who that is but until then, let the brave, often defeatist, meaningless rogue predictions, mind games and number crunching commence. Now is the time to be choked by cliche; how form is temporary, class is permanent and how head-to-head records and the...
The promotion king has forged a rugged, uncompromising and successful side from a bunch of misfits and the Premier League is in for an uncomfortable rideA day after Stoke City, a team who used to revel in their status as unpopular underdogs, were relegated from the Premier League, it was fitting that Cardiff City sealed promotion.Most seasons the Championship throws up an unexpected success story, a team that scraps its way towards the top of the table as everyone waits for the bubble to burst. Last season it was Huddersfield and Reading, the season before that Sheffield Wednesday. Related: Neil Warnock: ‘I’m not saying Cardiff would stay up but I’d enjoy every minute’ Related: Cardiff City back in Premier League...
Rovers’ manager secured a return to the Championship and will ask for money this summer to make the club competitiveSo Blackburn Rovers, the scrambled remains of the Jack Walker-funded club which once won the Premier League, have been promoted to the Championship, reversing the precipitous slide since they were bought in 2010 by Venky’s, the egg and chicken conglomerate of India.After the recent 3-1 home victory against Peterborough United their manager, Tony Mowbray, told the Guardian he would travel to Pune this summer to talk to the Venky family and ask them to invest more of their money to give his team a chance next season. He did the same last summer after relegation and they released £1.5m, of which...