Nothing quite beats the optimism you feel heading into the first game of the season. Everything is new – and anything is possible.
That is how it feels going into Saturday’s game against Liverpool. It will have been a full three weeks since our most recent league game – and it feels like longer.
By virtue of our early FA Cup exit, Marco Silva has had a week-long “pre-season” with his full squad, preparing them for this mini seven-game campaign, with the prize at the end of it being a return to European football after 14 years.
Our first game back is against last season’s champions, Liverpool. Their “pre-season” has been a miserable one, losing 4-0 to Manchester City in the cup.
We have lost just once in our past five games against the Reds, giving us confidence going into the game at Anfield. With an extended period of time to view the tools at his disposal, Marco’s starting XI will be telling.
We are 10 points off our record Premier League points total and two wins from equalling our high of 15 league wins. Yet we sit in the strange position of knowing that we could achieve both and still finish outside the top eight – and miss out on the Conference League.
It is, on paper, a far from easy task. Four of our seven games are against teams above us in the table, while two of our opponents below – Bournemouth and Newcastle – sit within two points of us.
The flip of that is that any results we achieve will have a greater impact on the table. It is a fascinating mini-season, and after three weeks of twiddling our thumbs, Fulham fans are champing at the bit for proceedings to resume.
That pre-season optimism is in the air – and rightly so. Anything is possible, after all.
Find more from Drew Heatley at Fulhamish, external