What is this Fulham team’s identity?

Each season, Marco Silva's Fulham has had one. But now it's less clear.

Copyright Leighton Rudd 2026

Every team evolves (or devolves) year after year. Sometimes this can be a really obvious evolution, usually through a managerial change - look at Manchester United and the difference from Erik Ten Hag to Ruben Amorim to Michael Carrick. Not just the difference in results, but the difference in methods.

Evolution under the same manager can be a lot more subtle and gradual, but when you zoom out, still really stark. You probably can’t pinpoint the moment that Mikel Arteta decided to turn his Arsenal side into villains, but they have certainly changed throughout his reign (of terror).

Under Marco Silva, we’ve benefited from the continuity of having the same leader, but it certainly hasn’t stopped us evolving. Every year, I think we’ve had a distinct identity, which has been different from the preceding season.

Championship champions

Probably the easiest season to define. An identity that ultimately boiled down to: “We don’t care who you are, we will score more goals than you”.

We set up every week to dominate possession with technical central midfielders, attacking with flying full-backs and a front three that the division will never forget.

It was possibly my favourite ever Fulham season as it was a genuine joy to watch and such a massive change from the style of football we’d become accustomed to at the time.

Premier League evolution

2022/23

We’d been stung by the top flight before. We knew we’d need to adapt, sacrificing our desire to dominate and focusing on being a bit more pragmatic.

Marco absolutely nailed it in our first season back and I think we actually forget just how incredible that campaign was. Finishing 10th as a newly-promoted side is always going to be impressive, but particularly when we had to deal with all of the “yo-yo club” discourse.

We decided we would prove everyone wrong. It was a team filled with Premier League rejects and has-beens who stood up and proved that they were still good enough. That felt like our identity, from those in the stands to those on the pitch, telling the world that we are Premier League club.

As an aside, I do think that such a superb first season did set the bar really high and has made the seasons after it feel less impressive than we would have considered them back in our Championship days.

2023/24

Season two in the top flight was notable for a few things. Firstly, it was the year we took on the Big Six. Results against Arsenal, Manchester United and Spurs brought such a buzz and garnered a lot of public attention. We’d beaten the beatable teams in our first season but struggled against the heavy hitters, so this was a marked change.

Secondly, it was life without Mitrovic. We’d spent years relying on goals from our Serb and when he wasn’t scoring, we were losing; we all remember Ivan Cavaleiro playing as a striker. It was hard but we found a way to spread the goals across the team in a way we hadn’t seen in a while.

Finally, it was an eye-opening season for what is possible in cup competitions. We pushed Liverpool all the way in the semi-finals of the Carabao and it made us realise that silverware was a genuine possibility.

All of these factors considered, I think our identity that year was David. We knew our place in the pyramid but we realised, on our day, we could topple the Goliaths of England.

2024/25

Last season was further growth. The squad continued to evolve, with some of the old guard being replaced and real depth being added.

We started to feel comfortable in our top flight status, slapping about some of the weaker teams but still able to trouble the top dogs on our day, including that win at Stamford Bridge on Boxing Day.

It was a record points tally but also a season of missed opportunities in the league and cup. Cynically, last year’s identity was probably bottle jobs. But bottle jobs that we had affection for. We’d seen enough to know we had something special in us, that we could go all the way sometime soon.

Who are we now?

So what is the identity of the 2025/26 vintage?

I don’t know.

I’m not sure we have one - not a positive one anyway. This season has felt like we’ve just bounced about, winning games here and there, usually in a manner that evoked relief rather than inspiration and joy.

We’ve been tepid against the big boys. We’ve eked over the line against the division’s whipping boys, and sometimes lost to them.

The biggest problem is that I can’t really pin down a style of football, especially recently. We’ve been slow in possession, without having a lot of it. We’ve not pressed the opposition relentlessly, but also haven’t countered quickly when we do win it.

It’s like we’re an amalgam of different aspects of our previous seasons and it hasn’t come together in a cohesive way. We’re the equivalent of mixing together lots of pretty colours, thinking you’ll make an even better colour, but you actually just end up with grey.

And look: grey’s fine. This season certainly hasn’t been vanta black, like it has been for Wolves. We’re a stable, mid-table Premier League club, whose performance is probably par for the course. However, it’s also been the most disappointing of all of our seasons under Silva because we’ve seen “teams like us” achieve our dreams whilst we continue to plod along. We know that we are capable of doing it too, we just can’t seem to make those dreams a reality.

Perhaps our identity is simply: a middle-of-the-road, average top flight side, with little to get excited about? That sounds an awful lot like Crystal Palace, before they won the FA Cup.

So, fingers crossed for next season eh?