Five factors behind Fulham’s failed European ambitions

While I tend to lean towards the more positive side of the fanbase when it comes to all things Fulham, given the club’s recent run of form and our dramatic drop-off from European dreams to the lows of 11th in just a matter of weeks, even I feel a strong sense of frustration. 

Frustration with what could have been, the position the team fought so hard to earn, only to lose it in emphatic fashion, and how the story of our season has so quickly changed from Wembley-bound, FA Cup semi-final chasers looking to break our Premier League points tally, to now hoping to scrape into the top 10 if we can pull something surprising off in our last two challenging fixtures. At this stage I think some fans would settle for simply stopping Brentford getting Europe.

But where has it gone wrong this season? Why has the narrative changed so swiftly, and has this been a success story, or one of missed opportunities? Let’s look into some of the key shortcomings of our 2024/25 Premier League campaign and analyse just why we have fallen short against our counterparts.

1. Failing to back Marco in January 

Last summer was great. Marco Silva committed to a fourth season at the club and we welcomed a wealth of experienced players with big price tags. Joachim Andersen arrived to shore up the backline and play creative football, Sander Berge charged into the centre of midfield to fill the Joao Palhinha-shaped void and Emile Smith Rowe broke our transfer record. That’s before we even get to the fairytale return of Ryan Sessengnon. 

We bagged big fees for the outgoing Palhinha and Jay Stansfield, and this squad was set up to put Fulham in a position to seriously challenge for Europe. Was it the smartest window in terms of expenditure and the age of players purchased? No, other clubs did better business in that regard, but it was more than enough to back Marco Silva and give him the success we craved.

Fast forward to the second half of the season. Fulham find themselves flying high, maximising every ounce of energy from this squad, but the issues are clear to see. Reiss Nelson’s time was cut short early in the season, Harry Wilson struggled to be consistently available, Kenny Tete’s time out put a serious strain on Timothy Castagne, our record signing ESR was hiding behind defenders. 

Back-up GK Steven Benda showed in his outings he’s not Premier League level, and we were lucky he wasn’t forced into league action. Clearly the powers that be didn’t want to do any business, only signing 36-year-old Willian on a free transfer at the last second. 

Compare that to the admirable business of the likes of Aston Villa, who staunchly backed Unai Emery as he challenged domestically and in Europe, and it feels like we were forced to walk the last six miles of a marathon that we may have originally taken a medal from. The board didn’t back Silva enough to achieve our full potential and we fell at the last hurdle as a result.

2. Emile Smith Rowe

Now I’m not laying blame on Fulham’s entire season with an individual player who doesn’t decide his own price tag, but we can’t ignore the fact that, at least for this season, this record-breaking £32m transfer did not pay off the way it was supposed to. 

We saw glimpses of Emile’s talent at the beginning of the season where he formed a solid partnership with Alex Iwobi, and we all felt he would come good with a bit of time to gel, but the opposite seemed to happen. 

As the season progressed, we saw less and less risk-taking. We saw a player seemingly hiding behind defenders more often, and creativity expressed by passing it backwards to our defenders to retain possession with the easier option, rather than gambling to create something spectacular. The lack of strength and conviction in the press was a real sinker too, and there were times that Andreas Periria suddenly seemed like a miracle starter for his workrate in comparison.

In a recent podcast Jack Collins highlighted his contribution stats mainly coming against lower opposition sides too, a completely valid point. I want to see our biggest players causing top six teams turmoil, not shying away. With a total of nine goal contributions across the entire season, you can’t help but wonder what our position in the table may have looked like with a handful more.

3. Injuries at crucial moments

Overall, the percentage of Fulham’s squad injuries across the entire season has actually been fairly minimal. While it was a shame to lose Nelson so early, we had more than enough options as a whole in the first half of the campaign at least. Losing Tete was also a shame, but Castange did admirably all things considered, which in turn has left him out for the rest of the season. 

The real killer has been at crunch time as we reached the closing stages of our campaign. Antonee Robinson has had far too much gametime and we’ve had an over-reliance on him, which seems to have exacerbated a longer term issue. We haven’t had a similar level of player to back him up and even since returning from injury, he’s looked so far off the pace in this final stretch. Remember how he reached 10 assists and was set to break records? That’s fallen so far to the wayside.

Raul Jimenez had a respectable first half of the campaign too, but you can see he’s exhausted, and Rodrigo Muniz’s injury out of the blue has asked far too much of our Mexican forward. As much as I love him, there were some matches where we really needed a holding centre forward and a change of tactics, and the 90 minutes week in, week out leaves us flat when finishing games and ultimately being punished.

Finally, Sasa Lukic being out in recent weeks has removed any sort of engine in the centre of the park when we need it most. While we can’t blame our entire season’s shortfalls on injuries, it has to be said that these recent hits in the most important time of our season have definitely affected us, and the inactive winter transfer window did not help.

4. Baffling Silva decisions

First off let me just stress that I have huge respect for Marco, what he’s achieved, generally the style of football we play, and the level at which we have competed under him. I love his ability to man manage and most times get the absolute maximum out of his players. But there has to be some blame laid at his door. 

Fulham fans talk about progress, but finishing 10th, 13th, and currently 11th feels more like treading water to me. Breaking our Premier League points tally sounds great, but when you consider the three exceptionally poor promoted sides are in the league this year, combined with only frontrunners Liverpool taking the lion’s share of points, with the rest spread out more evenly across the rest of the league, there was a real opportunity to smash so many more records.

More specifically though, some of Marco’s in-game decisions have to be questioned, and in particular substitutions in key moments. Everytime there is a mid-half water break or head injury and both teams run over to their managers, I feel like we come off worse on every single occasion. 

Silva openly admitted to making the wrong subs against Chelsea when we lost from a winning position and I respected him for owning that, but what on Earth happened against Everton? At 3-1 down with 20 minutes to go, and significant added time due, bringing on Willian and Tom Cairney completely sucked the life out of me, and any pace we hoped for in attack. After that we barely had a sniff at goal. He also brought off Smith Rowe who was having a decent game, and sending on the young players almost felt like he had given up and was trying to create a small positive narrative out of what was a game that frankly, we completely bottled.

I appreciate his style has got us where we are and I’m grateful for Marco Silva’s magic and the memories, but there have been poor substitutions made in the latter stages of this campaign and I worry that the fanbase are starting to feel a sense of discontent with his decisions.

5. Too many missed opportunities

Much like Andreas’s one trademark shot from outside of the box every game that sails over the crossbar but never stops us believing, Fulham’s season has been a story of missed opportunities in key moments. 

While Silva’s renegade win-or-bust style has generally seen us gain more points then we lose, perhaps oa draw here and there would have served us better on some occasions. It’s quite hard to swallow the fact that when we were faced with crucial six-pointers, games you want to win but can’t afford to lose, we really let ourselves down with losses to Palace, Brighton, Bournemouth, Chelsea and Villa in quick succession with Brentford next on the horizon looking red hot. 

Speaking of missed opportunities, it has to be said that Fulham have been incredibly wasteful in front of goal and on the ball with possession. When you look at the way Palace took us apart in the FA Cup quarter-final, it just oozed of a team that could take their chances when it counted. Against Everton, we were 1-0 up and completely dominated the play and opportunities, only to find shots flying wide or comfortably into the arms of Jordan Pickford. Tactically we can be guilty of over playing at times, but the players have to own the missed opportunities particularly in leading positions to kill off key games.

With two games to play, perhaps it would be best to lay judgement when the season is all said and done. I for one would love nothing more than to beat Brentford and City and end on a high. 

While European football is now essentially a pipe dream, I still have Jack Kelly in my head: “What’s the point of being alive if you can’t dream?”