Just how good could this season become for Fulham?
What a week that was.
Six points in six days, which leaves us well in contention for Europe. I write that, and a large part of me says “calm down, mate – it’s still November”.
But we’re more than a quarter of the way through the season, and we’ve never amassed more points after 11 Premier League games.
The only other time we bagged 18 points by this point was 2003/04. We finished ninth that year, and those of us who lived through that campaign know that we’d have qualified for Europe if Manchester United hadn’t come in for Louis Saha in the January window.
This time round, Marco Silva has created a starting XI that works for one another – there’s no talismanic figurehead who, if poached, would leave the whole operation crashing down.
And even if we did, would we really bet against Marco? We had Mitro, we had Palhinha, and Silva still manages to duck, weave, and fill the gap.
So now we must start asking: what are our realistic hopes and expectations for the 2024/25 season? If you extrapolate our points-per-game across the season, we’re on course for 62 come May. Last year, it took 63 to finish in the top six. It may be that fewer than that this term with a few surprise results meaning clubs in the upper echelons of the league are snatching points off each other.
Europe is most definitely on the cards, then, but as we all revel in the first couple of months of this season, we’re reminded of how little room for error there is if you want to get into European competition. We’ve lost just three games so far, and two of them came in our last five. It’s a high level to maintain across 38 games.
But Marco’s got everyone singing from the same hymn sheet, the vibes are immaculate off the pitch, and everything looks to be coming up Fulham.
As someone of this parish once said, “what’s the point of being alive if you can’t dream?”.
If there’s one person I’d back to make my dreams come true, it’s Marco Silva.
