It’s very much the opposite of déjà vu.
That appears to be the message that Fulham captain Tom Cairney is sending during a recent interview that he did with The Athletic. As he approaches his 30th birthday, Cairney was in the process of talking through his life and times at the club, and what has changed from year to year.
After the horror show that was the 2018-19 season, there were always going to be comparisons made as to whether or not Fulham would suffer the same fate as they did last time around, and what they could do differently. In the interview, Cairney said that one of the biggest differences between then and now is the emotion within the squad:
“We’ve got a good squad. It feels closer together as a dressing room. The result (the 2-1 win over Leicester at the end of last month), that would not have happened two years ago. It does feel different, and the way we’ve performed is different, albeit we didn’t get a few results that we maybe should have done. I understand people saying, ‘Oh, it’s going to be the same again. We’ve lost, conceded goals’. But within these four walls, and within our dressing room, it doesn’t feel like that.
I’m confident we’ve got more than enough to stay up.”
Will we stay up?
Yes
No
He raises a good point about the results. Because after the horror show that was the first couple of weeks of the season, we have started to look more competitive in games. More so than in 2018-19 where we very rarely looked like we could put up a fight in most games.
Even our game against Manchester City last time out, where last time around we’d have turned over and been steamrollered showed that we have something about us to stay somewhat competitive. If we can just take that throughout the rest of the season, we should be fine.
We may need help from those below us being terrible, but things are certainly looking a lot better for the season.
What about you? What do you make of Cairney’s comments?