Fulham

You got 46 points last season, if you got that the previous season u'd have probably finished 11th, was more to do with the improvement of teams like Sunderland, West Brom and Newcastle than anything. Also how many points did you get in the previous season.

 

Fulham are well run, well managed, discilpined, stay out of the headlines, get on with it without dramas and have a good core group of players. Seems like a pretty simple formula for success (being a good top 10 side representing success).

They could easily find themselves in a Charlton situation if their fans started thinking they should be challenging for more than what they can realistically achieve. Everyone at the club knows finishing around the top 10 is enough.

 

Good organisation + team sprit + a certain amount of ability + good managemet can work wonders. I remember Forest won a league title plus two European Cups on the basis of it.

 

That sort of mindset I can't understand. How can people be happy to just sit there and be a nothing club? If you're not looking to improve then you might as well just shut the whole club down.
What are the fans going to tell their grandkids? Tales of how the club finished somewhere in midtable obscurity, and ultimately achieved absolutely nothing? Sod that.

 

Yeah, much better to be in League One. For a club with a small squad, stadium and resources I don't see that aiming to finish 8th / 9th / 10th each season is lacking ambition. They know they'll have an outside chance of EUROPA and maybe a good cup run, nothing wrong with that.

 

Always had a soft spot for Fulham, my favourite away venue. I like the ground and the location, and the fans are among the best too.

Didn't enjoy my visit there in Feb, one of the coldest nights of the year it must have been. I was perishing all night, just couldn't get warm at all. Can't ever rememember a night as cold as that in London before.

 

I'm happy with the progress that Bolton are making, if we finished 9th/10th/11th every year then we would be doing very well.

Our support is small compared to most PL teams, our budget is small compared to most PL teams, and our squad is small compared to most teams. Every year we take survival and thank it, as we remember the state that Sammy Lee and Megson left us at. It will take about 10 years before I will become complacent about being in the PL probably.

There is such thing as ambition to survive

 

It's better to be in League One with an ambition of improving, than to be an absolute nothing team with no intention of ever moving forward.
It's basically just saying "Well, we're crap". How little respect for yourself must you have to be like that?

 

The aim has to be improve every year, personally I will be happy if we're 12th again this year, as it's not going backwards and will be 2 good years back in the PL, but after that I want a top 10 finish.

 

I think the new additions to the team are going to give us that little bit extra that will get us into the top ten.

 

Hope so, think Enrique will go and got no faith in the people running the club, hope I'm proved wrong.

 

Still possible that Jose could stay, I'd like to think he could be persuaded to. As to the people running the club, they came into it without knowing anything about football and they haven't learnt much about it since they've been here.

Here's hoping that common sense will prevail and they'll see the light and the advantages of going onwards and upwards as a team.

 

Lets hope so, but its going to take time, everyone wants improvement and there will always be disappointing seasons at some point.

 

I'm pretty sure their fans will be telling their grandkids about their run to the Europa League finals in 09-10 -- some of the most heroic performances in that run that I've seen on a football pitch in the few years

 

Yeah, and what did they win?
The fact that they came so close, and that it apparently hasn't spurred them on to want more, is disgusting.

 

Have a word with yourself. You'd rather be competing for glory in League One titles and Johnson Paint Trophies (or whatever it is now) than securing top-10 PL finishes? And decent cup runs / aiming for a EUROPA League spot. You going to tell your grandkids about your glorious achievement in winning league one and getting relegated from the PL? Are you one of these that want's to jepordise the future of your club chasing an unobtainable dream? No doubt you'd want Lambert to spend £30m on players in the faint hope that you'll stay up this season just to show ambition when in reality you could spend that much and you will still be relegated. Nothing wrong with being realistic and happy with the level you're at. In Fulhams case top 8/10 is good, and something Norwich for one will never achieve.

 

We should have never let Hughes go IMO

 

Thats Souness for ya replaced him with Craig Moore and signed Boumsong for 8 million

 

Always gets one of the warmest applauses at SJP does Aaron Hughes, certainly from me. Great player, and so versatile, he'd be starting right back for me if he was still at the club.

 

Spurred them to want more?! Right, I expect Fulham to now go out and spend the apparently necessary 100m+ to fight with the Mancs and Chelsea...**** off. They followed up that runner up spot (to a strong Athletico Madrid squad) by bringing in a very capable Mark Hughes at manager, didn't sell any of their players, and subsequently placed higher up the table than the season before. I guess as a young Norwich fan you've been lucky enough to see promotion a few times now, but here's something you're not used to, there's nowhere to go up to once you're at the top. Realistically, its hard to break the top 6 or so right now, especially given the money being spent at the top.
Fulham was damn near relegated only a couple seasons before that cup run, I'd say they made a step up!