Obrigado, Andreas

As the dust settles on Pereira's departure, we remember the good times.

In the chaos of the end of the transfer window, the furore towards the lack of movement as the clock ticked down, and the excitement around new signings on Deadline Day, one of Fulham’s most utilised players of the previous three seasons quietly slipped away to return to Brazil - with Andreas Pereira’s €10m move to Palmeiras confirmed on 29 August.

The time might have been right to make such a move; Andreas had shown a desire to move back to Brazil, where he had previously had a very successful spell at Flamengo, and with one year left on his contract, Fulham getting a fee through the door made sense from a business perspective.

From an on-pitch perspective, with then-club-record-signing Emile Smith Rowe expected to step up this year, and the emergence of homegrown starboy Josh King - both in Andreas’ preferred number 10 position, it made sense as well.

I did think, however, that Andreas deserved a more highly-trumpeted farewell from the club and the fanbase. A couple of social media posts, a quick article on the website, and off he went - with the frustration about a lack of incomings (completely reasonably) dominating the discourse.

Perhaps when the Brazilian league finishes for the season in December, we will see Andreas return to the Cottage in the break to say a more pronounced goodbye, but in the meantime, I wanted to pay tribute to a player who has been absolutely instrumental in Fulham’s return to being a stable Premier League club once more.

Joining in the summer of 2022, Andreas was the second of the major signings to clamber on broad the good ship that Marco Silva was helming, arriving a week after João Palhinha, and while he wasn’t the first Brazilian to join the project (Rodrigo Muniz had rocked up the season before), he was the first to have a major role - the first main character of the Samba Whites.

It was perhaps fitting then that he gained the honour of being the first Fulham player ever to play for the Brazil national team while anchored at Craven Cottage, although we hope Rodrigo will share that honour before long.

Andreas laid down the marker of how important he was going to be to Marco Silva from the first moment of his first start - in that 2-2 draw with Liverpool at the Cottage in August 2022. Once Bobby Madley blew the whistle that signalled the start of another campaign in the top flight, our new number 18 tore into the game in a whirlwind of energy - leading the press ahead of Aleksandar Mitrovic, linking up the play in midfield, and with some silky tricks and flicks in the mix too.

Andreas was ever-present in that campaign - starting every Premier League game and four in the FA Cup - until an ankle injury ruled him out of the final five - although Fulham were comfortably safe from the threat of relegation by that point. Five goals and six assists was a good return - it made Andreas our joint-second top scorer, and our leading assist provider across all competitions. Any doubts about the quality and calibre of a player who had previously failed to crack the Premier League while at Manchester United faded into the ether.

Over the next two seasons, cracks did appear somewhat, although I remain steadfast in the opinion that Andreas’s contributions remain completely underrated by the majority of the fanbase. He picked up 12 goal contributions in 2023/24 - one more than he did the season before, with nine assists absolutely nothing to be sniffed at, but there was some feeling that our attacking midfielder needed to be more productive from open play - and Fulham’s big-money addition of Emile Smith Rowe in the summer that followed suggested that the hierarchy agreed.

There was also a perception that Andreas was trying to force a move at times, which I maintain was blown out of both proportion and context by mistranslations in the press. But it didn’t help his cause. Nevertheless, one thing that never wavered was Marco Silva’s faith in the Brazilian as his eyes and ears on the pitch, and the manager’s paragon of what he wanted his team to look like.

Andreas’ all-action game, his ability to do different jobs in different phases - whether slotting in as a press-leading front man in a 4-4-2 out of possession, dropping deep to try and affect games by punching the ball forwards from a deeper role, or linking play as the creative conduit in the middle, meant that he was Marco’s man, through and through.

Off the pitch, Andreas was the heart and soul of the Samba Whites, and in his friendships in particular with Rodrigo Muniz, Willian and João Palhinha, helped to bring the dressing room together. I have genuine and sincere doubts that without Andreas there to help bring him out of his shell and act as a mentoring figure, if we’d have ever seen the explosion of Rodrigo Muniz that we did in the second half of 23/24 - Muniz has gone on record to say that he found it difficult making the move to England and I firmly believe that Andreas played a huge part in making him feel comfortable at the club.

Yes, there were days that Andreas could be frustrating. Yes, there were moments where his set piece delivery was lacking, and yes, perhaps the deeper role didn’t get the best out of him in the same way. But after 119 games in black and white, the 10 goals and 22 assists don’t tell the full story.

In an era where we’ve seen big names come and go, Pereira remained a constant - a player whose work rate never faltered, who morphed to fit exactly what his manager wanted, and who sparkled both on and off pitch while in SW6. The time might well have been right for an amicable parting of ways, but we shouldn’t forget what the Brazilian brought to the table, how he helped to stabilise the club back in the Premier League and drive us forward, and without whom we would have been considerably worse off in the last three years.

I would guess that there will be plenty of games this season where I will come out saying ‘we could have done with Andreas there today,’ and his legacy should be one remembered fondly by the Fulham faithful.

Obrigado, Andreas.