Fulham

Fulham are the Premier League’s most deceptively dangerous side, and the fact that they keep getting underestimated says more about everyone else’s intellectual laziness than it does about the Cottagers. Based on the banks of the River Thames in west London, Craven Cottage is the most aesthetically pleasing ground in English football — the Riverside Stand offers a view that makes you forget you are watching a sport rather than starring in a Richard Curtis film — and the club’s history stretches back to 1879 with a Europa League final appearance in 2010 under Roy Hodgson to prove they are not merely a postcard.

Marco Silva has been the architect of Fulham’s quiet revolution since July 2021, and it is time he received the credit he deserves. After winning the Championship in 2021-22, the Portuguese has overseen consecutive top-flight seasons that have finally broken the tedious promotion-relegation yo-yo that defined the club’s 2010s. This is not survival — this is establishment. The ongoing redevelopment of Craven Cottage to approximately 29,600 capacity is a statement of permanent intent, not wishful thinking.

Australian fans who prize style and substance over empty bombast will find a kindred spirit in Fulham. This is a club that refuses to shout about its achievements, which is both its greatest virtue and its most frustrating habit.

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Fulham’s 2025-26 season is the clearest evidence yet that Silva has built something genuinely durable by the Thames. The Cottagers are targeting not mere survival but a top-half finish and potentially European qualification — ambitions that would have sounded absurd five years ago but now feel entirely reasonable. The expanded Craven Cottage provides a bigger stage, and the squad continues to improve in a way that suggests the best is yet to come. If the Premier League’s pundit class continues to overlook Fulham in their pre-season predictions, that is their problem. Silva and his players have stopped caring about external validation and started focusing on results, which is exactly the kind of attitude that wins you things.

VS — Chief sports columnist, australiafootball.com