Calm down - it's not all doom and gloom

Reasons to be cheerful. Life is good

It’s always good advice to not believe everything you read online, because if you have been trawling through ‘Fulham Twitter’ this summer, you’d think the world was coming to an end.

It has been quite exhausting to see that every action and inaction from the club, since Marco’s departure, has been met with a deluge of negativity, worry and nay-saying. Not to mention the so called ‘FPL experts’, and ignorant Premier League fans, who see a clip of our preseason and have come up with this patronising ‘fear for Fulham this season’ garbage.

Pipe down and worry about yourselves, because I’m here to tell you, it’s not all doom and gloom.

For the five years that Marco was at the helm, the stability could not be understated. But with that stability came sterility, predictability and certainly in this last year, a huge wave of apathy. The time for change was right for all parties. It was time for a less jaded, more front-foot approach. It was time to entertain again.

Frustration grew as it took an age for a new manager to be appointed, and I was guilty as anyone for feeling that way upon seeing rumour after rumour with no substance. You would think with all the flirting Marco did for every potential new job that the club would have fashioned a shortlist well in advance of his departure, and that his replacement would be made rather swiftly.

However, when you take the emotion out of it, look at the deliberate words of Shahid Khan on Marco’s departure. He said: “We will soon appoint a new leader in a timely but deliberate manner”.

Tony Khan spoke to our own Jack Kelly about the candidates and the interview process, and gave the impression it would take time. And after nearly a month, it was Alvaro Arbeloa who was finally appointed. A possible risk given his minimal experience, but he comes from a pretty impressive footballing background and learned his managerial style from some of the best in history.

And it is about time we go a bit rogue, go a bit risky, and take a punt, because the risk is there of it not working, but there is also a risk of this working incredibly well. And I think that possibility has been totally forgotten by a decent portion of the fanbase.

Although it seemed to take an age to get him through the door, when he eventually came, preseason had not started and it was before our players returned from their summer break.

During the interview process and beyond, he would have analysed the squad, and sold the board on his stylistic vision and how to play who, where. He’s not learning the existence of the players’ names on day one. He had his ideas, but he could only implement them once the players arrived. Could he have come in earlier? Yes of course, but there would have only been so much he could have done, but one of those things could have been his thoughts on incomings and outgoings.

The lack of transfer rumours was frustrating among the fanbase, and certainly was how I felt, and this grew as you see other teams seemingly doing decent, thoughtful transfer business whilst we standing around picking our nose. In reality, Arbeloa would have some idea how his vision would look with our current squad, aware of the academy players and perceived issues with the squad, but this would only be made clear once everyone was at Motspur Park. He would be both pleasantly and negatively surprised with what he saw, and feed back to the board on who he needs and doesn’t need. This can only happen after seeing everyone in action, and this takes time.

And so preseason begins, and a loss to Norwich. The meltdown was interesting to say the least.

Cries of Fulham being relegated were reverberating through all parts of social media. But let’s break it down: not all our players were back, we had barely a week of preseason, coming up against a team near ready for their season. Plus, this was more for Arbeloa to test and check out his team. An absolute non-issue; this was for fitness not for results.

And for context: Palace have lost to Bromley and Lens, Everton could not score against Stoke or Bolton, Leeds lost to Wrexham, as did Manchester United, and Newcastle lost to Bristol City…are we all going down? There are only three spots.

The second preseason game came along quickly and more of Arbeloa’s vision was taking shape. High press, high line, fast acting, direct, one-two touch football, decisive and attacking. Exciting interplay and interlinking, with some bright showings from King in particular. Equally as pleasing: integration of the academy players who finally are being taken a bit more seriously. Another chance for Arbeloa to show us what we can expect, with so much time to tweak and perfect his style, and get the players in to make us jump out of our seats to watch this exciting brand of football.

It was clear Arbeloa’s assessments led to communication to the board of certain positions he wanted to improve the squad in, and soon followed the rumours; mainly of youngsters from Real Madrid, with the smattering of youthful exuberance in names such as Shea Charles and Charlie Cresswell. A clear sign of the change in transfer strategy that for too long and been too safe and predictable.

The need for an evolution away from Arsenal cast-offs was long overdue, and these names brought modern ideas and excitement, or so you would think. The immediate overreaction of trepidation and wariness of unproven stars swarmed online discussions in impressive numbers. And of course, there should be some caution with any signings we make, but it’s about time we took risks, gambled on potential and dipped into markets we’ve seen other teams feast from in recent years. We’ve seen the resale value of picking up gems, and its belatedly our time to drink from that well.

Poaching players from your previous teams isn’t necessarily a reflection on the board’s lack of preparedness, but more about a manager who is well aware of what kind of players he needs and what he wants from them - and the board is backing him. It doesn’t feel like too much of gamble when you know what you are buying. And once you accept Arbeloa is our man, you have to back him, give him the tools he needs to succeed and see where it takes us.

Remember Marco brought Iwobi to the club. It’s likely Arbeloa saw who the board had scouted, and said, “That’s fine, but I know who would work best in this system, I have worked with better: go get Garcia and Palacios”.

Two of Madrid’s hot-shot Castilla players are now Fulham boys. Sensational! We are finally replacing Mitrovic! How bloody exciting. Add that to the talents of Kevin, King and Bobb to name a few, that is some exciting attacking talent.

The naysayers and doom-and-gloom artists will quickly blurt out their stats from last season without context, and that we will miss Wilson and Raul, who are of course Messiahs number one and two respectively. But the only part of Raul’s game we will miss is his penalty taking, and yes we will miss Wilson’s moments, absolutely, but let’s not forget that he went missing for large portions of matches and seasons, and spent more of this Premier League career with us on the bench rather than starting.

Beyond the two Spaniards, we need to fill other holes in the squad, such as back up RW, ideally two CMs (with Pitarch likely being through the door imminently) and a CB or two depending on departures. Full-backs and the goalkeeper situation are important to acknowledge but seemingly are not priorities at the moment. We need a more mobile and strong defensive aspect to this team if we want to play this attacking style of football.

With rumours swirling for all of these positions to some degree, I am more than confident we will get the right players over the line, that will suit our new style of play and get Arbeloa’s Fulham raring to go. If we can do that with players of a similar young age and talent profile, we are in for some spectacle when we watch the lads in black and white this season. Not only black and white, have you had a look at the trefoil laden, 1975 badge wearing beaut of an away shirt? Those red and white checks in that modern style, has to be up there with the best this club has ever released!

Kit aside, the key to success though, is unfortunately as always, the board and their notorious penny-pinching delay tactics. For this new era to kick on, now is not the time to delay. We need more players in, sharpish. It’s clear the squad will take time to adapt, as the video this past week shows, Arbeloa is looking to kill his players. With that, not only do we need players in fast, but we as a fanbase need to be patient because we might not see Arbeloa’s final vision for some time.

Now of course, this could all age poorly and we could be comparing Arbeloa to Frank De Boer before Christmas, but that’s an easy, lazy worry to parrot.

With what we are seeing with the style he is trying to implement, the demand of higher standards he has on his players (if his mic-ed up video is anything to go by), the possible use of academy players and the kinds of players coming in and rumoured to be coming in, this is such exciting time after such a drab 2025-26 season.

No one has any clue what this season holds, but I can’t help but feel excited and I hope more of the fanbase can be too, because the unknown doesn’t have to just be negative and scary, it could be the best thing that ever happened to this club.

As a famous philosopher once said: “"What’s the point of being alive, if you can’t dream?”