Fulham

There is no more beautiful setting in English football than Craven Cottage on a sunny afternoon: the Johnny Haynes statue outside, the Thames glinting beyond the Hammersmith End, the cottage itself — the little white pavilion in the corner that gives the ground its name — watching over it all. Fulham are the oldest professional club in London, founded in 1879, and they have spent nearly 150 years doing things their own way: playing proper football, in a proper ground, by the river. The Cottagers have never won the league. They have never needed to. This is a club about belonging — and about the occasional, glorious European night that reminds everyone what might have been.

It began as St Andrew's Cricket and Football Club in 1879, became Fulham in 1888, and moved to Craven Cottage — a former royal hunting lodge's grounds — in 1896. The club's soul is Johnny Haynes: 658 appearances between 1952 and 1970, England captain, the first £100-a-week footballer, a playmaker of such grace that Pelé called him the best passer he ever saw. Haynes never won a trophy with Fulham — the closest they came was the 1975 FA Cup final, lost 2-0 to West Ham — but his statue stands outside the ground because he represents everything the club wants to be. Bobby Moore, England's World Cup-winning captain, finished his English career at the Cottage in the mid-1970s, alongside George Cohen; Alan Mullery, Rodney Marsh and George Best all wore the white shirt too.

The modern fairy tale began in 1997, when Mohamed Al-Fayed bought the club and promised the Premier League within five years. Kevin Keegan delivered the first part, winning the Second Division title in 1999; Jean Tigana's impossibly elegant side then stormed the First Division in 2001 with 101 points, playing football that purists still talk about. What followed was the greatest night — and the greatest nearly — in Fulham's history. Roy Hodgson's 2009-10 side, a team of journeymen and craftsmen, marched to the Europa League final in Hamburg: past Shakhtar Donetsk, past Juventus after the most famous comeback the Cottage has ever seen — 4-1 on the night, Bobby Zamora and Zoltan Gera the heroes — past Wolfsburg and Hamburg themselves, before Diego Forlán's 116th-minute winner broke white hearts against Atlético Madrid. Clint Dempsey, the first American to score in a European final, Mark Schwarzer, Brede Hangeland, Danny Murphy, Mousa Dembélé: immortals, all.

Shahid Khan's 2013 takeover steadied the club after relegation, and the last decade has been the Championship's most entertaining yo-yo: play-off final wins over Aston Villa in 2018 and Brentford in 2020, Aleksandar Mitrović's absurd 43-goal season in 2021-22, and then, under Marco Silva, three seasons of comfortable, often beautiful, Premier League consolidation at a redeveloped Cottage with the new Riverside Stand rising over the Thames. Silva's departure brought the summer's boldest appointment: Álvaro Arbeloa, the former Real Madrid and Liverpool defender, taking his first senior managerial job on the banks of the Thames.

Arbeloa inherited a squad with real quality. Bernd Leno remains one of the league's most reliable goalkeepers; Joachim Andersen organises the defence; Antonee Robinson — the USA's “Jedi” — is arguably the best attacking left-back in the division. In midfield, Alex Iwobi's intelligence and Emile Smith Rowe's silk give Fulham their creative core. And the summer recruitment was ambitious: Gonzalo García, the marquee striker signed from Real Madrid to be the new No. 9; Kevin, the Brazilian winger whose unpredictability terrifies full-backs; and Oscar Bobb, the tricky Norwegian, adding craft in the final third. On paper, this is a squad that should be looking up, not down.

The 2026-27 season, though, has been a story of frustration. Five games, no wins, two points: a 3-2 opening-day defeat at home to Chelsea in a thriller, a 1-0 loss at Sunderland, a 3-2 home defeat to Crystal Palace in which Fulham twice led, and then — the paradox of this side — a goalless draw at Liverpool and a 1-1 draw with Manchester United. They can live with the league's giants; it is the winnable games that keep slipping away. Arbeloa's football is brave and front-footed, and the underlying numbers say the results will turn, but the table does not do underlying numbers — and in a league this ruthless, winless starts have a habit of becoming seasons.

What happens next is a test of nerve. The fixtures will soften, García needs a run of games to find his rhythm as the focal point, and the Cottage — still the most civilised ground in the division — needs a first win to release the tension. Longer term, the Arbeloa project is fascinating: a young, modern coach with elite playing pedigree, a squad built to play progressive football, and an owner in Khan who has always backed his managers. Fulham have spent 147 years proving that there is more than one way to be a football club. The next few months will show whether this particular way still works.