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...
Mark Robins’ eye-catching Coventry deserve their headlines, Liverpool have a bargain in Andrew Robertson and Wolves are already good enough for top flightAmid all the hoopla over the departing Mark Hughes, it is right to take a moment to praise Coventry City. They were deserved winners of the third-round tie at the Ricoh Arena, despite giving up the greater number of chances to the visitors. The Sky Blues played with a determination and energy you might expect of a team assuming the David role in a Goliath encounter. But they were also calm on the ball and often quite cute on it, too. Their play was all the more striking, given the starting XI had an average age of 24...
The former England manager, now 70, will be desperate to erase memories of Euro 2016 and will look to imitate the simpler days of West Brom and FulhamWelcome back, then, Roy. And rejoice Croydon, for he has returned. The news that Crystal Palace will turn to Roy Hodgson to replace the departed Frank de Boer is perhaps unsurprising given the background noises of the past few months. For all that there will still be a tendency to roll the eyes, to mock the sudden shift in footballing direction – from the Ajax Way to Purley Way – and to point out that Hodgson is 70 and hasn’t had a club job in five years.This is undoubtedly a little unfair. In...