Can Fulham learn lessons from Norwich struggles to kick the yo-yo habit?

Fulham have been bouncing between the top two divisions for the last five years, but is there anything they can take from Norwich’s struggles?

After an almost unsettling run of inconsistency over the previous few weeks, Fulham finally got the better of their end-of-season jitters on Bank Holiday Monday and Luton Town were on the receiving end. For the third time this season Fulham won 7-0, getting them over the 100-goal barrier for the season and finally sealing the EFL Championship trophy.

But Fulham have recently found getting into the Premier League to be fairly straightforward; staying there has proved to be considerably more difficult. They’ve now been promoted three times in the last five years, interspersed with two calamitous seasons in the Premier League from which they could manage just 54 points combined.

This is hardly a unique statistical blip, either. Norwich City are on the same up-and-down trajectory as Fulham, albeit a year behind them on the same cycle. Just over 48 hours before Fulham lifted the Championship trophy, Norwich’s journey in the opposite direction was confirmed after they lost at Aston Villa.

It’s hardly like Fulham somehow can’t support Premier League football. They played 13 consecutive seasons at that level from 2001 and when they were relegated in 2014, it was the first time in six years that they’d finished below 12th in the table. There is nothing which dictates that Fulham are pre-determined to get relegated from the Premier League once they’ve got there.

This season’s promotion was certainly more emphatic than their previous ones. In both 2018 and 2020 they went up through the play-offs, whereas on this occasion they are the champions and are likely to be by a considerable margin.