It will soon be five years since Fulham and Norwich shared a division. They sum up the gulf between the Premier League and Championship.
Even as the corks popped and the champagne flowed in the biennial scenes of promotion jubilation at Fulham, they must have been praying it is third time lucky. They’d just beaten Preston North End to reach the Premier League again, but everybody in Craven Cottage is aware of the pattern. For the past four seasons, it has been going up one year and coming down the next.
Rewind a decade and the West London outfit were a Premier League stalwart; they’d fretted over relegation and been saved by Roy Hodgson in 2008, but he’d then taken them all the way to the Europa League final. Fulham were the archetypal top-flight middling success story, enjoying the days of punching above their weight and trying to grow in stature and quality, while simultaneously not overreaching and risking implosion. It was a constant balancing act that, for the most part, every club other outside the traditional Big Six, with the possible exception of Everton, has ultimately failed at. By 2014 it was a stretch too far.
Premier League security is nothing more than a myth. The middle block of the division is a constantly moving operation that becomes invariably more difficult to keep up with. Clubs like Sheffield Wednesday and Bradford City have fallen into lower-league obscurity since the turn of the century, followed more recently by Sunderland. Others who, like Fulham, pushed into Europe from a perceived position of guaranteed security every season in the mid-2000s – Middlesbrough, Bolton Wanderers and Blackburn Rovers – have scarcely been seen since their luck ran out.
Hate how a non-top 6 side beating one of the best teams in our league is now treated like an FA Cup giantkilling.
Okocha (Bolton), Santa Cruz (Blackburn), Malbranque (Fulham) & Viduka (Boro) etc. used to rock up against Wenger & Fergie and bloody their noses on the regular.
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