Do Fulham really collapse at the end of each season?

Ed Moisson digs into the narrative.

After the Bournemouth game I felt pretty low. But then I listened to two Fulhamish podcasts of such disaster-laden hyperbole that I thought maybe I was having an hallucinogenic dream – or that I’d died and woken up in Legoland.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Fulhamish podcasts and the panoply of experts always talk far more intelligently and eloquently than I ever could.

But my own despair over one game - or one red card - was nothing compared to the all-embracing doom that I heard. Marco wasn’t good enough. The team wasn’t good enough. Fulham’s recruitment over the past five years isn’t good enough. Even Billy Badger isn’t good enough. (OK, I might have imagined that last one.)

Along with the gloom – soon compounded by a draw at Molineux – came the repetition of the narrative that had apparently become fact: Fulham collapse at the end of every season and we’re worse than similar-sized clubs. I completely understand the despair, but is the narrative really fair?

So, I had a look to see whether some softly-spoken stats offered the same conclusion as the noisy narrative I heard.

First up: Fulham get worse over the course of every season

Breaking up each season into eight chunks, you can see when Fulham picked up their points over the course of each year.

As a rough guide I’d use 1.5 points per game to judge what is a good or bad tally. An average of 1.5 points per game would give a team 57 points over the season: top half of the table and in with a chance of European football.

Fulham’s average points per game:

Last season Fulham’s average points per game dropped to 1.2 over the last 10 games. This drop-off was even clearer because we had averaged 1.6 and 1.8 points per game in early parts of the season.

This season there was a drop-off in the penultimate five weeks, but not in the final five – whatever it felt like at the time. Besides, the damage was really done when Fulham averaged 0.6 points per game earlier on. To me, the season doesn’t fit the narrative.

And in the previous two seasons I don’t think a late season drop-off is clear-cut either. I guess it could be argued that Fulham slipped away gradually over the second half of the 2023/24 season. But the team was still picking up more points in that period than for several parts of the first half of the year.

Second: We’re not as good as other mid-tier clubs

In trying to see just how much worse we are than other mid-tier clubs, I had a look at a few clubs’ points totals over the past four seasons.

Fulham average 51 points per season over the past four. That’s one point above Bournemouth and one point behind Brentford. It’s also the same as Tottenham.

Of course that can translate into a big difference in the final table, but it doesn’t shout to me that there is a massive gulf compared to some of these clubs.

Yes, we are comfortably behind Brighton (in the Premier League since 2017/18), but we’re also ahead of Crystal Palace (in the top flight since 2014/15).

Average points per season (2022/23 to 2025/26):

But despite these stats and despite the record number of Premier League wins this past season, there’s still no European place and no cup finals. The disappointment is real.

But the narrative that has grown over recent games risks overshadowing the season as a whole – and the team’s achievements since Marco took over.