Fulham are currently dead last in the Premier League table, sitting four points from safety and fearing what might happen if Sunderland make good use of their three games in hand.
Well, fans are fearing, that is. Apparently, the Fulham players themselves only recently realized that they’re in a fight to avoid relegation. At least, that’s what manager Felix Magath has suggested.
“The whole season they haven’t realised that they are at the bottom of the table,” Magath said. “At the beginning of the season nobody thought about a relegation fight. The team was not built for a fight against relegation. Now they realise.”
The German, who’s yet to win a match in his three games at the helm, revealed just how complacent Fulham’s players have been. “The players tell me ‘oh, we have 12 games left (on Magath’s appointment), we have an easy schedule, we are able to manage this.’”
Now, the Cottagers are down to nine games left in the season, and Magath is targeting six wins from those remaining matches - which would bring Fulham’s total points up to 39.
At a guess, Magath doesn’t see his side beating Manchester City, Everton, or Tottenham. That means they’ll need to take all three points from Newcastle today, then go on to beat Aston Villa, Norwich, Hull, and Stoke (at the Britannia) before clinching a win over Crystal Palace at the Cottage on the final day of the season.
This plan seems awfully ambitious for a man whose side has picked up just one point under his leadership, from a draw with fellow fighters West Brom. They’ve conceded 65 goals and have a -36 goal difference, which won’t do much to help should safety come down to a tie-breaker. Kostas Mitroglou has yet to make any real contribution and last weekend Magath gave a start to 19-year-old Cauley Woodrow, who’d just returned from a stint in League Two.
In other words, it looks like if Fulham clinch safety at the end of the season, their next couple months will closely resemble the plot of an uplifting Disney film. Or do you think the Cottagers have the talent and skills necessary to lift themselves up?