Fulham fans could pay dearly after promotion to Premier League

Fulham are likely heading back to the Premier League, but some of their supporters are unhappy at what they may be charged once they’re there.

Fulham will be returning to the Premier League again come the end of this season. They’re 14 points above third-placed Luton Town having played a game less, and at this juncture, only an unprecedented collective case of the yips could possible derail another return to the top flight after a season away. But none of this means that Craven Cottage is a particularly happy place to be, and the chief driver behind any supporter unhappiness is what they may be expected to pay to watch Premier League football next season.

Supporters of the club have a special relationship with Craven Cottage. Its location on the banks of the River Thames means that it has long been prone to the interest of property developers, from the 1987 proposal to merge the club with Queens Park Rangers to play at Loftus Road under the name of Fulham Park Rangers to their extended stay at Loftus Road between 2002 and 2004 because no work had been carried out on the ground to bring it up to Premier League standards, which led to a boycott of ‘home matches’ by some supporters.

The protest group from that era, Back To The Cottage, later morphed into the Fulham Supporters Trust, and 18 years on from the club’s return to Craven Cottage, the Trust has had to speak out on the subject of the ticket prices to sit in the club’s new Riverside Stand, which is due to reopen for the start of next season. Work on the new stand started in the summer of 2019, but the pandemic slowed completion of the project, with the capacity of Craven Cottage cut to just over 19,000 while the work was completed.

Fulham intend to have the lower