Fulham: 20/21 Summer Window Preview

When you go over scenarios in your head of how a season can play out, I don't think anyone would have predicted "Play-Off Final win in August" as an outcome. It's fair to say it's been an interesting season, in so many ways. But the end result of this year long season is the one we were all hoping for of promotion back to the Premier League. 

Looking back over the season, I suppose the thing you have to say is the ends justified the means. Because we all know it's been a slog at times, and we've had some very bad games along the way. But the aim at the start of the season was promotion and we've got the job done. It makes the 3-0 defeats to Hull and Barnsley a bit more palatable simply put. I do also have to say fair play to Scott Parker, because for those who follow me on Twitter you'll know I've been very vocal about Parker at times this season. But the brief at the start of the season was "Promotion" and he's got the job done in his first full season as Manager. He's definitely made mistakes over the season, but I'd like to think he's learned from those mistakes over the season and tactically he's probably had his best two games as Manager in the Play-Off 1st Leg and Final- so his season's peaked at the right time.  

The interesting thing for us now is what we do now we've "got to the dance". When we were promoted against Villa that felt like everything at the time. Whereas because we've only been out of the Premier League for one season this time around the promotion only feels like Part One and staying up is the true aim this time around. 

A big part of how we do when we line up in the Premier League is of course the transfers we make, and the general transfer policy we have this window. I would like to think Tony Khan's learned his lesson from our last "Premier League summer" with the signings he'll make, but I suppose time will tell. "Ends justifying the means" is also relevant to our Transfer Policy, because it was a definite policy last summer to sign "proven" Championship players- and we have been promoted so it'd be interesting to see if we have a similar policy this summer with exclusively signing "proven" Premier League players. 

While Premier League experience should definitely be a factor, I'm not sure the "going for proven players" policy was actually a roaring success. Our two "marquee" signings in Knockaert and Cavaleiro were benched for Kebano and Kamara in the Final and Harry Arter wasn't in the squad. But you also have to balance that out with Harrison Reed, Onomah and Hector being three of our best players over recent times and Bobby Reid definitely contributing even if he has been frustrating in front of goal. My personal view is that no Premier League experience shouldn't be a breaking point if the right player was available, but especially with such a tight turnaround experience, at least in English Football, is preferable. 

I've also made a point to aim for "younger" players with one notable exception, because while this team has got us up- I want to aim for some sort of continuity going forward and having a team where the majority are either late 20s or early 30s isn't ideal. The average age of the signings I'm suggesting today is 24.5, and that's weighted slightly up by one 33 Year Old who's a bit of an obvious one. That's the sort of market we need to be shopping in, because for me we need players with genuine resell value for if we get relegated again, and we should also be looking at players we can buy, improve and sell on at a profit. That's the reality of the level of club we are. 

It's also worth saying as always that these aren't the exact players I'm expecting Tony Khan to sign, but they're definitely the profile of players I'd be looking to target. And as always, I'm not expecting to sign all of the names on this list- in most cases it's just one from each position. 

Ins

Goalkeeper

I said exactly the same last year, but we don't need to sign a Goalkeeper this summer. Especially with such a tight turnaround continuity within the defence where possible is an absolute must and nobody can say Marek Rodak hasn't earned his chance to start for us in the Premier League next season. The #2 Keeper isn't even particularly relevant because Parker was playing Rodak in the FA Cup as well, but maybe Tony Khan can set up some sort of Royal Rumble with Bettinelli, Jordan Archer, Fabri and the youth Keepers for who gets the honour of sitting on the bench next season and who gets moved on. 

Defenders

We basically have to build the defence around Michael Hector this summer. I do think Joe Bryan is starting next season at Left-Back, but we need to move on from Tim Ream at Left Centre-Back, we probably had to even this season just gone and I would think it's a priority given we literally signed Terence Kongolo to presumably replace Ream as Left Centre-Back in January. And the other priority for me is a Right-Back who'll come in and really own that position, because we haven't had a fixed one this season between Christie, Odoi and Steven Sessegnon- and I'm not convinced any of the three would be good enough to actually start for us in the Premier League next season. Any other defensive signings would be a bonus, but Left Centre-Back and Right-Back have to be the priority. 

Ethan Pinnock (Brentford)

Would this be rubbing salt in the wound? I'm not really sure. I feel like there's always a lot of talk about Pontus Jansson because he's a "beat your chest" "passion merchant" type Centre-Back, but next door to him in my opinion is just a much better Centre-Back. For me Pinnock is absolutely top drawer, and while all the Brentford auction talk in the coming days and weeks will be about Benrahma, Watkins etc. I think Pinnock would be a bit of an "under the radar" top drawer signing if we were to make it. 

Pinnock for me is a very "Fulham" signing as well, he definitely fits the profile of Centre-Back we'd usually target and him being left footed means he provides the natural balance in the pairing that Tim Ream has provided for us next to Odoi, Kalas, Hector etc. over the last few years- because it's definitely time for Tim Ream to be moved on from being a consistent starter in this Fulham team. 

Chris Mepham (Bournemouth)

From talking about a current Brentford player to a former one who we're passing on the way up. Mepham is someone who I've rated for a few years now, and obviously with Bournemouth going down the auctions for their players are (in theory) starting. Bournemouth have been a car crash defensively for pretty much their whole time in the Premier League, but I do genuinely think the potential is there with Mepham and as long as Bournemouth weren't demanding an extortionate price for him I definitely wouldn't say no were we to sign him. 

Matt Clarke (Brighton)

Clarke is probably the more natural alternative to Mepham, simply by virtue of the fact he's left-footed. This isn't based on our transfer policy a few years ago where we seemingly just went out and signed every middling Championship teams Player of the Year, but Clarke did win Derby's Player of the Year on loan from Brighton and he's definitely on an upward trajectory career wise. This is a big statement, but everything I've seen from Clarke bar one really dodgy Own Goal suggests he can actually make it in the Premier League. He's got the technical and physical attributes in spades, and while Pinnock would be my first choice, it would by no means be "settling" if we did sign Clarke instead.

The obvious problem we'd have in trying to sign Clarke, and I'd assume it's similar for Leeds in their efforts to try and sign Ben White. Brighton aren't going to let them go cheap, especially to a team that they'll be competing with to stay up next season. Which is totally fair enough for them, he is their player after all. But if the price was reasonable, I'd definitely be keen on trying to sign him. 

Gernot Trauner (LASK)

This suggestion is partially based on my belief that we suit a 3/5 at the back more than a 4. Especially in the Premier League, Joe Bryan in particular can do some damage going forward- but he's not good enough defensively and leaves too much space behind him to be a regular starter in a 4. It's also based on the fact that Parker has favoured switching to a back 5 to protect leads, so the logic would follow that at least in some games next season when we're playing teams like City, Liverpool etc. and we most likely setup for a 0-0 we start in a back 5. 

It's with that in mind that I suggest Gernot Trauner who's coming off the back of an absolutely exceptional season with LASK as a middle Centre-Back in a three. Whether it's as a starter with Hector on the right and let's just say hypothetically Pinnock on the left, or off the bench coming on and splitting the two Centre-Backs either side of him I think Trauner would be a very good addition for us. You'd also have to think Trauner would be relatively cheap coming from the Austrian Bundesliga and being 28 years old so he could be signed in addition to one of the names mentioned above without breaking the bank. 

Joakim Maehle (Genk)

I was quite tempted to have Ryan Fredericks in this section. Because simply put he's the Right-Back we need in my opinion. Someone who'll provide genuine pace and overlapping runs down the right-hand side. That in my opinion is also what we need to get the best out of Anthony Knockaert, because while I'm by no means saying he's blameless he's been very easy to defend against in my opinion because it's been easy to double up on him knowing Christie or Odoi (or Sessegnon) aren't really providing the option of the overlap down the right. And whatever else you can say about Knockaert, he does have the defensive work-rate to cover the Right-Back if they're caught out of position when they do overlap. So if we do look at trying to get the best out of Knockaert, that's one way we can look to do so next season. 

But my first suggestion is Joakim Maehle, who's probably very ambitious- but at the same time it's the sort of ambition we should be looking at this summer in that Maehle would be a young, hungry talent looking to prove himself in the Premier League and if he does succeed secure a move to a bigger club down the line. As opposed to the "ambitious" signings of over the hill players like Schurrle who were just there to secure the wage packet. Maehle simply put is everything I've just described above, quick, has good stamina to run up and down the line and he's just a very decent Right-Back. He wouldn't be cheap, and I doubt we'd be the only Premier League team interested in him- but Tony Khan has shown ambition with his signings in the past, it's now perhaps the time to channel that ambition into players like Joakim Maehle. 

Aurelio Buta (Royal Antwerp)

As with Pinnock and the Centre-Backs, Maehle is my main target for Right-Back- but it's definitely worth looking at alternatives as well. There's not much to say about Buta that isn't also relevant to Maehle, in my opinion Maehle is just a better player and that's why I'd favour him. It does have to be said that Buta would probably be a lot cheaper than Maehle, and in these COVID times we do have to be smart with how we spend our money this summer and budget accordingly compared to our last big summer window in the Premier League. 

Jorge (Monaco)

For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you'll know at various points of the season I was an advocate for Parker's sacking and for him to be replaced with Jorge Sampaoli who at the time had rehabilitated his reputation after Argentina's disaster World Cup and just left Santos after a successful spell there. A big part of his success at Santos was thanks to the loan signing of Jorge from Monaco, and if I couldn't get Sampaoli- I'd at least like to get Jorge. 

I've had half an eye on the majority of these names over the last month and I actually had two separate transfer lists depending on what division we were in after the season had concluded- and it's with that half an eye I know that Jorge's Agent has said he wants to leave Monaco- and given he's also coming into the last year of his contract to me that suggests he's available for a very reasonable fee. 

I should say I'm not suggesting Jorge comes in and immediately replaces Joe Bryan, but Left-Back was basically the one area this season where we had zero competition for places and I would've liked to see that addressed this summer regardless of what division we were in. Being in the Premier League just means we can aim a bit higher and attract better candidates to fulfil that need for competition for places. 

Antonee Robinson (Wigan)

As with Pinnock and Brentford, this is perhaps rubbing salt in the wound given we played a part in Wigan's relegation on the final day of the normal season. I feel like the majority of fans are keenly aware of Robinson now after his high profile move to Milan collapsed in January- but if reports are to be believed and thanks to Wigan's sketchy relegation Robinson has a very cheap release clause that can be activated it's an absolute no brainer for us to try for him this summer. 

There's not much more that needs to be said, he'd provide genuine competition for Bryan and he's a very good prospect- the problem we have is a cheap release clause and being a very good prospect means we wouldn't be the only team in for him. In fact if the release clause is what I've seen reported I would imagine Robinson's Agent will be very busy in the days and weeks to come now that Wigan's relegation has been officially confirmed.  

Midfielders

There are two things that need to be sorted out before we get a true picture of what our Midfield will look like next season. The first is Harrison Reed, we do supposedly have an option to buy on him- and I don't see a scenario that's played out that would mean it wouldn't be triggered considering he's played a lot of Football for us, and we've been promoted. But we just have to wait and see with that one. The other is the future of a certain Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa which I'll look at in more detail later on. 

In my ideal world we'd be lining up at the start of next season with a Midfield three of Reed, Anguissa, Onomah which in my opinion is the most balanced Midfield we could look to use- but the signing suggestions I've made are made with all possible scenarios of those two particular players in mind. 

Nathaniel Chalobah (Watford)

I've always liked Chalobah, the long-term injury he had a while ago has definitely stalled his development but he's still only 25 and I 100% believe there's a player in there who is capable of playing in the Premier League. The advantage we'd have in a potential pursuit of Chalobah is of course Watford's relegation, although that could easily be reversed to say with Doucoure and Capoue most likely off Watford would be more keen to actually keep him for next season because if he stays fit he'd be top drawer in the Championship for them next season. 

As I've already talked about, with the tight turnaround for next season Premier League experience could be a big factor going head first into next season and obviously Chalobah has a lot of it. I'd personally look to sign Chalobah regardless of where Zambo and Harrison Reed end up because he'd be a good option to have- but he'd become more of a priority if Zambo did leave. 

Isaac Hayden (Newcastle)

From my main priority if Zambo leaves, to my main priority if we can't sign Harrison Reed. Isaac Hayden's had an up and down career with Newcastle it's probably fair to say. But I think over the last 18 months or so he has shown he's Premier League quality. The big factor in a potential signing of Isaac Hayden for us is he's been very vocal about his desire to move down south/back to London for family reasons over the last couple of years- so if we put in a good enough offer to appeal to Newcastle I would think/hope he'd jump at the opportunity to stay in the Premier League and move back to London. 

The problem we'd have, as I talked about with Matt Clarke is thanks to Newcastle's failed takeover they'll be one of the teams we're competing with to stay up next season and Newcastle won't want to strengthen a rival without us paying over the odds. 

Peter Etebo (Stoke)

In the event of us signing Harrison Reed and keeping Zambo, I still think we need to add one more Centre-Mid to the ranks to be completely secure. Especially if the reports I've seen since the Play-Off Final are true and Harry Arter hasn't played enough games to trigger his buy option, on top of the fact that Stefan Johansen and Kevin McDonald could barely get a game in the Championship let alone the Premier League. Which leaves us with Cairney, Onomah, Reed and Zambo as the four current options. As such, I do think we'd need to add one more, basically to replace Arter's "squad player" role in the team who'll start 8-12 games depending on fitness and injuries and be an option off the bench. 

This was nearly another Stoke player in Badou Ndiaye, but as I've said right from the outset- I want to aim younger this summer so we can put some proper building blocks in place. I'd see this move as similar to the one we had with Kongolo where we take a chance on someone who clearly doesn't want to be at (Huddersfield) Stoke- but there is the potential of a good player in there waiting to be unlocked. I've liked the look of Etebo when I've seen him, he presumably wouldn't be an extortionate price to sign permanently- or we could even be cheeky and try and sign him on loan.

Petr Sevcik (Slavia Prague)

I've had half an eye on Slavia Prague over the last 18 months or so since we were linked with Michael Ngadeu-Ngadjui in the January window of our Premier League season which spawned the famous "wall of meat" description. In fact, had we stayed up, last years version of this blog would've featured one of West Ham's relegation heroes as a result in Tomas Soucek. 

Sevcik is more box-to-box than Soucek is, but to me he'd basically be an upgrade in the Arter/Johansen role we've had this season. Sevcik is exactly the sort of player we should be targeting this summer in that he wouldn't be very expensive, he wouldn't necessarily come in and expect to start straight away/start every game, and he wouldn't be someone who is "too big for us" like a Seri- but he definitely has the ability to make an impact for us next season.

Enock Mwepu (RB Salzburg)

What would one of these Blogs be without talking about a Salzburg player? I feel like Erling Haaland's emergence over the last year has sort of sped up the general consciousness into thinking what I've thought for a while that Salzburg is an absolute factory when it comes to talent and talent development. Haaland isn't even a very good example of it considering he was only there for 6 months, but I've been keen on players like Stefan Lainer and Valon Berisha over the last few years who were definitely "Salzburg products". 

For want of a better way to describe Mwepu, he's Zambo from two years ago. He'd need time to bed in over the course of the season- but signing him to supplement the Midfield rather than coming in and expecting him to carry it should hopefully mean we can bed him in properly and get some good performances out of him over the course of the season like we had with Zambo at the back end of the Premier League season. 

Eberechi Eze (QPR)

I was debating which section to actually put Eze in for this, because to me given we're going up to the Premier League he'd fulfil the sort of role Matheus Pereira's played with West Brom this season where he'd be played out wide some games and centrally in others. 

I settled on Midfielders because that's where he's played predominantly for QPR, and a general point has to be made about the lack of goals that's come from our Midfield this season. That definitely needs to be addressed going into the Premier League, because Mitrovic won't be scoring 26 goals next season and we need just more creativity and invention in the Midfield. I remember a stat brought up in the build up of one of the Play-Off games of Cairney having 3 Assists and them all coming last August- which just isn't good enough. 

I do think Onomah could fill those boots based on how he's played over the last month, but it's unfair to come up and put all of that weight on him- so signing someone like Eze who's versatile and can play off the left so he wouldn't be stepping on Onomah's toes but can hopefully step into those "creative" shoes in the Midfield and produce the moments of magic to win a game that would otherwise finish 0-0 would be a big priority for me this summer. 

Forwards

In my "Championship list" I had two scenarios really, one where we keep Mitrovic and one where we don't. That has obviously become a non-issue as a result of promotion- so for me it's just about adding depth and adding goals so the burden isn't completely on Mitrovic to score the goals to keep us up next season. The ideal scenario for me would be adding one Winger and a genuine back-up Striker if Mitrovic did get injured again, because while the False Nine worked in the 1st Leg against Cardiff and the Final- we'll be under pressure and getting battered in a lot of games next season and need an out-ball that Bobby Reid doesn't give us and that definitely showed in the Cardiff 2nd Leg. 

Ryan Babel (Galatasaray)

I feel like Babel is the very, very obvious one. He's been begging it on Instagram enough over the last few months- and now we are in the Premier League there's no concern over the visibility of the league impeding on Babel's Euro 2021 hopes like there would have been had we stayed in the Championship. Especially with such a tight turnaround, I feel like Babel would be ideal because he has the Premier League experience in spades, but more crucially he's played under Parker and he knows probably 95% of the players in the dressing room from his time with us in the Premier League. 

I've seen some talk about Babel being a Free Agent, but I'm not sure where that's come from given to my knowledge he is still a contracted Galatasaray player. But with that said, given they loaned him out he's clearly surplus to requirements at Galatasaray and I wonder if we could work out a deal where we get Babel and some cash for Seri given I doubt they could fully afford to buy Seri outright unless it was in a million instalments given they won't have Champions League money to work with next season. 

Karlan Grant (Huddersfield)

I think Karlan Grant would be close to my ideal signing this summer. He's got room to develop given he's still only 22, but he's coming off the back of a very good goalscoring season with Huddersfield. The added bonus on top of the obvious with Grant is that he's actually been playing off the left a lot for Huddersfield in the season just gone, so it wouldn't be a case of having to start Mitrovic or Grant, and we could easily start both with Knockaert, Cavaleiro, Kamara etc. on the right. 

Given he is young and English, Grant wouldn't be cheap. But in general I don't think I've proposed any proper "break the bank" signings over the course of this blog and I'd "only" be looking to make one or two proper "big fee" signings of which Grant would be one. 

Jean-Pierre Nsame (Young Boys)

I feel like given the tight turnaround for next season, form from the season just gone should be very relevant in any potential signings. It's with that in mind that I suggest Jean-Pierre Nsame who is literally averaging a goal a game for Young Boys in the Swiss League. 32 Goals in 32 Games isn't a record to ignore, even if it is "just" the Swiss League and he has the physical characteristics to fill Mitrovic's shoes as the "hold-up" Striker to give us the out ball I was talking about earlier. 

Ivan Toney (Peterborough)

If the reports are to be believed and Brentford have ear-marked Toney as Ollie Watkins replacement if/when he gets sold this summer, I think we should just cut out the middle man and go straight in for Toney before he becomes the latest in the line of Strikers Brentford have signed and quadrupled in value after Maupay, Watkins, Andre Gray etc. 

Signings from League 1 and 2 are on the table now Opta are tracking the stats in the divisions as per Tony Khan's interview last year, and Toney was the absolute "top of my list" player from League 1 regardless of what division we were in after the Play-Off Final. Toney has everything really, and while it might be a case of him needing to "conquer" the Championship before he gets a move to the Premier League, I genuinely believe he could make the jump straight away and provide goals to supplement Mitrovic as our main Striker. 

Outs

This section, and the tone of it would be very different had we lost to Brentford. But thankfully that's not the case, and as such we don't have to get angsty over the futures of players like Mitrovic this summer. I've already made reference to it earlier, there's one big "out" in this section that needs to be sorted out- but beyond that the "Outs" for us this summer should be mainly "trimming the fat" type player sales. 

In-terms of contracts, I think we will offer Neeskens Kebano and Denis Odoi new contracts, especially in Kebano's case you can definitely say he's earned it. How much they actually play next season is another thing entirely. 

Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa

This is the "out" that needs to be sorted sooner rather than later, because as I've already talked about Zambo could be a key player for us next season and provide a real balance in the Midfield along with Reed and Onomah. 

But him staying is far from a guarantee, especially with some of the teams he's been linked with like Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid. It ultimately comes down to whether Villarreal have the financial means to trigger their option to buy on him in these COVID times and whether Zambo would want to play for us, and I'd like to think he would. He's spoken quite highly of Parker for putting his faith into him at the back end of the season and I'd be very surprised if Parker wouldn't have him back. Ultimately it's a "wait and see" scenario, but we don't have much time to actually "wait and see" given the players probably only have two weeks off before they report back to start preparing for next season. 

Jean-Michael Seri

I've already spoken about my "ideal" scenario with Seri in the Ryan Babel section, so I won't repeat it here. Seri never really got the "Parker stamp of approval" like Zambo did game-time wise at the back end of the Premier League season, so I'd be surprised if Seri was in favour if he were to stay at the Cottage next season. It's most likely just a case of trying to get the best deal possible to move Seri on permanently, because we'd now be in a better financial position with the Premier League money to eat a bit of a loss on his transfer fee.

Marcus Bettinelli

I think Bettinelli's at a bit of a cross-roads with his Fulham career, and just career in general this summer. As I've already mentioned, there's a very real chance our #2 Keeper wouldn't even be playing Cup games next season- so if Bettinelli did stay at Fulham barring injury it would just be to warm the bench. 

The conversation then moves to moving Bettinelli on, and if he wants to play Football he'll have to move back to the Championship. But if he is happy sitting on the bench/in the stand he could also take the move a lot of "home grown" Keepers have in the latter stages of their career and become a 3rd Choice Keeper at a club like Chelsea or Man City. Ultimately it's down to Bettinelli, and while I was critical of him before he was dropped for Rodak he's definitely earned the right over his full tenure at Fulham to choose what he wants to do next and for us to support that. 

Fabri

As I've already mentioned, there's a spot on the bench for someone next season. And that could very well be Fabri. He's barely played a game of Football for two seasons now, but in-terms of a pecking order if Bettinelli was moved on I'd definitely be more confident with Fabri on the bench than Jordan Archer. 

If/when Fabri is moved on I would imagine it'd be similar to the deal we struck for Rui Fonte where we just let him go for free to get his wages off the books and be thankful for it. But there is a chance he stays as our #2, it just hinges on Bettinelli's future. 

Alfie Mawson

How much are train tickets to Norwich these days? If the rumours are to be believed and Norwich are keen on Mawson, I would have bitten their hand off regardless of what division we were in come the conclusion of the Play-Off Final. It probably isn't all Mawson's fault that he's been an objective failure with us, because he's had some terrible luck with injuries. But it's with those injuries in mind that mean if we can get any sort of transfer fee for him we have to take it and run. 

Maxime Le Marchand

Le Marchand's definitely higher on the pecking order than Mawson is, by virtue of the fact that he's actually played Football since the restart. So it probably isn't impossible that he does stay with us next season. But as I've talked about in the "Ins" section, Tim Ream for me would essentially be dropping down into the Le Marchand squad role for next season and that would leave Le Marchand as the odd man out. As a result, we could probably get a nominal transfer fee for him to move back to France, and we take it and move on. 

Kevin McDonald

I'm in two minds about this one. On the one hand, if McDonald actually wants to play Football next season he doesn't have a chance with us bar the odd Cup game. So in that sense he should be looking elsewhere. However, I think a big thing that we'll target this time around, especially with such a tight turnaround is to keep the dressing room as positive as possible for as long as possible- and we all know that McDonald is arguably the biggest character, and definitely the biggest leader in the whole dressing room. 

As I've already talked about with Bettinelli, McDonald has earned the right to decide what he wants to do next, and if he's happy in essence being a Player/Coach and "Dressing Room General" for Parker next season I definitely wouldn't say no. 

Stefan Johansen

I know Johansen signed a new contract not that long ago, but he's fallen out of favour with Parker as the season has gone on, and if the reports are to be believed and we don't want to use the buy clause on Harry Arter who was definitely more in favour than Johansen, logic would dictate that Johansen would also be surplus to requirements for us this summer. 

We should be able to get a decent enough fee for Johansen from either a Championship club or say a Turkish club as an example. The one thing I wouldn't want to do is loan Johansen out, unless it was with an Obligation to Buy next year to cover the club signing him because of COVID. Either keep or sell essentially. 

I'm not sure we all quite appreciated how hard the Premier League would actually be when we got promoted two years ago, but we're definitely going into next season under no illusion of the challenge that's being put in front of us. We'll be definite underdogs going into next season, and having such a tight turnaround and a small window to sign and bed in players before next season starts will exacerbate that. 

However, despite my criticisms of Parker, we're definitely going up as a more streetwise, cynical team that should be better equipped to give a good account of ourselves in the Premier League. I think the way we adapted to blunt Brentford in the Final is the perfect example of that. So provided we don't go overboard with the signings like we did last time and keep that mentality about us when we do go on a bad run next season- we should at the very least be able to give a better account of ourselves than we did last time around. Relegation is of course a real possibility for us, but if we get relegated with a team that look like they're playing for each other and playing for the badge I'll accept that any day of the week because that's all you can really ask for as a Fulham fan. And if we do stay up, even better. 

Thanks for reading as always, I can honestly say I wasn't expecting to be doing my Summer Window Preview in August when my last Blog went out. But hopefully you still enjoy reading them, because I still enjoy "scouting" and writing them. As I've already mentioned, we know next season will be a slog at times- but such are the times we're living in at the moment we have to enjoy moments and nights like Tuesday when we can and take a breath before we go again next season in the Premier League. Thanks again for reading and predominantly I hope you're all staying safe in these uncertain times, and that you can all bask in Tuesday's win for a little bit before we go again in September. 

Fulham: 19/20 Season Preview

As we all get ready for the new season to kick off tomorrow, it's time for another Fulham Season Preview. I didn't do one of these last year, for the very simple reason that the day I would have posted it on was Deadline Day. Generally speaking I like to think of these Previews as an extension of my Summer Window Previews I do at the end of the previous season. So I didn't see much point in posting one with what would have been hours left of the Transfer Window.

With these previews I try and cover all things Fulham related that have happened over the summer, as well as what I'm expecting to see over the next 10 months. With that said, there's only one place to start.

The Transfer Window
Ins
Ivan Cavaleiro (Wolves, Loan)
Cavaleiro was on my "long-list" for my Summer Window Preview, but I didn't include him for the simple fact that I thought he'd be too expensive for us this summer. So I suppose I was right in the sense that we've gone for an initial loan with an option to buy, presumably so the big transfer fee is further away from our "100m summer" in the three year FFP cycle.

This signing doesn't really need much discussion. We know how good Cavaleiro can be in the Championship, and with the players we've lost (and could still lose) we needed to add genuine quality either side of Aleksandar Mitrovic- and we've definitely added quality with Cavaleiro. It sounds like Tony Khan really went for this one as well and worked on it for a long time, so full credit to him for getting it done.

Martell Taylor-Crossdale (Chelsea)
It's worth mentioning Taylor-Crossdale, just because I'd be surprised if he didn't get a look in for the first team next season- even if it's just in the Cups. That's just an assumption, but it's based on the fact that he turned Hoffenheim down to join us- combined with the fact that he openly spoke about a pathway into the first team when he signed.

In fact, I'd actually argue Taylor-Crossdale has a case for being our second choice Striker. Because I personally see Kamara as a Right-Winger and Rui Fonte as a #10. While that doesn't mean I'm expecting to see Taylor-Crossdale in the matchday squad for Barnsley- I do think he'll be making some appearances as long as he impresses in the 21s.

Anthony Knockaert (Brighton, Loan)
This signing confirmed one thing to me. I have no idea what an "ambitious" signing is for Fulham these days (more later). Last summer, even for how badly it turned out, players like Seri weren't even on my radar as potential signings. Similarly, I didn't even see Knockaert as a potentially ambitious option when I was planning my Summer Window Preview. I was looking at relatively cheap options like Darwin Machis (who to be fair had a decent Copa America) and we turn around and sign someone who played thirty games in the Premier League last season.

While no signing is a guarantee of success, with Knockaert and Cavaleiro playing either side of Mitrovic we should have an absolutely lethal front three once they get used to playing together and everything "clicks". Of course having lethal forwards isn't a guarantee of success as we perfectly showed the season we had McCormack and Dembele up-front and finished 20th in the Championship.

Outs
I must say I expected a few more names in this section. As usual I'll only talk about the players who had first team minutes for us last season.

Jean-Michael Seri (Galatasaray, Loan)
I was surprised by this, just because with the greatest of respect I thought Seri could do better than Galatasaray. Although with that said he didn't exactly rip any trees up for us, and then had a very underwhelming AFCON- so maybe he couldn't.

I said it in my Summer Window Preview, Seri is by no means a bad player- he just didn't "fit" at Fulham. Especially when things started to fall apart basically from September onwards and it became clear we weren't a Premier League standard team. I'm interested to see how he gets on with Galatasaray, it's by no means a bad move for him given they're going straight into the Group Stages of the Champions League- it's just up to Seri to get his Nice form back and prove himself all over again.

Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa (Villarreal, Loan)
This is the one that annoyed me. All of the noises coming out of the club over the summer indicated we were planning for next season with Zambo as part of the squad. From Tony Khan's podcast interview to the fact he was included in the kit release pictures (and as of writing this he's still in the header photo for the Fulham Twitter page). So to see Zambo suddenly depart pretty much on the eve of when he was due back in after AFCON was very frustrating.

I can only assume his agent and/or him started to make some noise in regard to wanting a move, because I don't see why we would've let him go- especially on loan otherwise. My hope is the option to buy is a big one, if not on par with what we spent on him at least close to. Because the potential is 100% there with him, and if he has a big season for Villarreal he'd suddenly look like he's worth what we spent on him.

The one thing that does have to be said about the loans of Zambo and Seri is to the best of my knowledge it's actually better for us in an FFP sense for us to have loaned them out rather than sell them at a loss this summer. The fact we still own them means we're still paying however much a year in amortisation on the FFP balance sheet, whereas if we sold them at a loss (which we would have done) we'd have taken a massive loss all at once and that in turn could have impacted how much we can spend this summer.

Harvey Elliott (Liverpool)
As I said, I'll talk about the players who appeared in the first team last season- as a result the most recent departure to talk about is Harvey Elliott going to Liverpool. We don't know how much we've got for Elliott yet, but I'd personally be content with anything above 4 million for him.

It's hard to "miss" Elliott, given he played a total of 18 minutes in the Premier League last season- and those minutes were most likely given to him to boost a potential tribunal fee. I didn't expect him to play a big role (if any) for us next season if he did stay anyway- so I'm happy to take the money for him and hope it funds a player or two that can play a part for us next season. Which brings me on nicely to the next section of this blog.

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Potential Transfers
Ins
Josh Onomah (Spurs)
The most concrete link we seemingly have at the moment is Josh Onomah, for the simple fact that he was spotted at the West Ham game. This goes back to what I briefly talked about in the Summer Window Preview about Matt O'Riley and his agent, because he'd pretty much be coming in as a back-up to Tom Cairney. I don't see him as capable of playing the Johansen role in the 4-3-3 simply put, and frankly I think this would be a bit of a pointless signing if it were to happen because I'd rather use Rui Fonte as the back-up in that #10 role if O'Riley isn't an option for off the pitch reasons.

Although with that said, you'd expect Scott Parker and Matt Wells to know (or know a lot about) Onomah from their time at Spurs- so if they see a role for him next season you can only trust them however underwhelming the signing might appear.

Harry Arter (Bournemouth)
The other concrete(ish) link we have at the moment is Harry Arter, which is a rumour that has been bubbling all summer. Presumably at least in part because of the family link between Arter and Scott Parker.

To me it's quite simple with Arter. Do I think he could do a job for us next season? Yes. Do I think there's better, younger options out there? Yes (more later). With that said, if Parker wants Arter then as already said you have to back him given he's the one picking the team.

I do find it a bit funny that there's a bit of a cross-section of people who don't want Arter who were also having digs at Tony Khan for not letting Jokanovic make his own signings. Because Arter is 100% a Parker driven move, not just because of the family link, but because it would also go against one of Tony Khan's main transfer policies of not signing anyone over the age of 28 unless they were a big upgrade which I'm not sure Arter would be.

As far as actual links go to the best of my knowledge that's it. There's been a few names mentioned, but I can't see anything coming from them. So we're now moving into "my" shopping list for the rest of the transfer window. Quite simply these are names that I believe would strengthen the areas of the squad that need strengthening before the transfer window slams shut next week.

Daniel Ayala (Boro)
We need to sign a Centre-Back. It really is a "need" as well, because as Mawson limping off against West Ham showed we're dangerously short at Centre-Back. This squad isn't a million miles away from being able to challenge for the automatics despite some of the negativity I've seen over the last week since Zambo left. However, signing a quality Centre-Back is an absolute must if we want to achieve our stated goal.

The profile of Centre-Back we're looking at is pretty clear for all to see based on the names we've been linked with (Michael Hector, Pontus Jansson, Ezri Konsa). Championship experience and right-sided seem to be the order of the day- so as a result I thought I'd bring up an alternative option in Daniel Ayala.

I'd assume most people know all about Ayala, so it's not worth going into great detail about him. The interesting thing about Ayala to me is that he's going into the last year of his contract with Boro- and given Boro's two years of parachute payments are up, if we put in a decent bid I'd like to think Boro would accept. Ayala would be more of a stop-gap than a long-term solution, but I do think he'd do a good job for us were he to sign.

Dylan Bronn (Gent)
I made one big mistake in my Summer Window Preview in May. I didn't talk about any players from the Belgian League. I did have one in my "long-list" in Mbwana Samatta, but I thought he'd be too expensive. But still, that was my mistake. I was actually looking at three Belgian League Centre-Backs- Brandon Mechele (Club Brugge), Sebastien Dewaest (Genk) and of course Dylan Bronn. The reason I opted for Bronn is mainly down to age.

Dylan Bronn would be more of a long-term option than Ayala given his age and potential. Especially if we do sign Harry Arter we'd have a lot of players who are either 28+ or turning 28 next season. Which isn't a major concern, but it is something to keep an eye on. For the size of club we are, we need to look at signing players in the 21-24 age range to develop, increase in value and then sell on. It's the reality of the size of club we are, and at the moment the only players we have in that age bracket are Mitrovic and Kamara.

Bronn is a different Centre-Back to Ayala in pretty much every conceivable way, but I genuinely believe he'd be exceptional for us and partner Alfie Mawson (when fit) perfectly given he's very mobile but also defensively sound. Bronn would be quite expensive, but if we are going to spend big in one position in the next week, it absolutely needs to be Centre-Back.

Iyenoma Udogie (Hellas Verona)
This potential signing isn't a pressing one, I'd see it as more of a "bonus signing". I'd personally like to see us sign an actual Left-Back to cover Joe Bryan. We've got players who "can" play Left-Back like Odoi, Ream and Le Marchand, but we don't have an actual Left-Back.

Enter Iyenoma Udogie, who fits the bill perfectly for me. Udogie reminds me quite a lot of Ryan Sessegnon in that he's excelling at youth level, to the point where he played above his age bracket for Italy at the U19 Euros this summer- and he's scoring quite a few goals from Left-Back at youth level as well. Udogie is only 16 but then again so was Sessegnon when he broke through.

I remember us being linked with a Left-Back from Shamrock Rovers earlier in the summer, so it's clear we're in the market for a Left-Back for the 21s. I'd see Udogie as similar to the Taylor-Crossdale signing in that he'd start with the 21s, but then if he impresses he'd train with the First Team occasionally and get his chance to impress in Cup games and if Joe Bryan gets injured we could potentially look at playing him in the league next season.

That would be my selling point to Udogie when convincing him to sign, which was also seemingly our selling point to Taylor-Crossdale in that one of Scott Parker's "things" seemingly is a proper pathway to the first team for youth players.

Lennart Czyborra (Heracles)
I suggested signing Adrian Dalmau from Heracles in my Summer Window Preview, and we're taking another trip to Almelo in this blog. This time for a Left-Back.

Czyborra's further along in his development than Udogie, but you'd expect that given he's practically ancient at 20 years old. In fact, Czyborra had his breakthrough season for Heracles after signing from Schalke last summer. Czyborra's very quick, and given how it seems Parker wants us to play with "inside forwards" a lot of our width needs to come from the Full-Backs- which increases the need for pace in those areas. Whether Czyborra would be happy to join as cover after having his breakthrough season with Heracles is the only concern I'd have over whether we could sign him or not.

Uros Racic (Valencia)
We're approaching the end of a cycle with our current midfield with Cairney and Johansen turning 29 and McDonald turning 31 throughout the course of next season. McDonald especially is someone we need to look at replacing given how important the "anchor" is to the 4-3-3 system.

I see Racic as a natural successor to McDonald in the "anchor" position. He possesses the same physical and technical attributes that McDonald does, but he's also pretty much 10 years younger. Racic is seemingly surplus to requirements at Valencia as well, so I doubt it would take an extortionate fee in order to sign him- we could probably even try for a Loan + Option to Buy which would be better for FFP purposes.

We'll be starting the season up at Barnsley with Kevin McDonald, but when we start getting into "game every 3 or 4 days" territory I'd start bringing Racic in, and provided he performs I'd be wanting Racic to fully succeed McDonald as our starting defensive-mid by the end of the season. That's not saying anything against McDonald, but we need to phase out players like McDonald, Ream and Odoi sooner rather than later given their advancing age and it being clear after last season that they're nowhere near Premier League standard which of course is where we want to be.

Oriol Romeu (Southampton)
This was my "more later" I talked about in the Anthony Knockaert section. I genuinely don't know if this recommendation could be classed as "too ambitious". Romeu isn't an absolutely guaranteed starter for Southampton, and Southampton's wage bill is quite inflated- so if we went in for him with a similar deal to Knockaert of a Loan + Option to Buy and possibly a wage increase for Romeu- we might be able to convince him to join and Southampton to let him go.

Romeu would be more of the Knockaert variety in that he's turning 28 in September, but that is seemingly the market we're shopping in this summer in that we're not really looking beyond this upcoming season/our two years of parachute payments with the players we're bringing in. I'd still be very keen to sign Romeu of course. He'd be an absolutely top drawer signing for us and would help us get back to running midfields like we did in our two full seasons under Jokanovic.

James Lea Siliki (Rennes)
Moving on to the Stefan Johansen role in the 4-3-3, and introducing James Lea Siliki. Siliki's been on my "radar" for a while now, specifically after putting in one of the best crosses I saw across any League/Cup last season for Ismaila Sarr for the third Rennes goal as they beat Arsenal 3-1 in the Europa League.

Siliki would be an interesting option to have, because he's primarily a Centre-Mid, but he's also played Left-Wing and even Left-Back. As I've already talked about, Parker seems to want to play with "inside forwards" having Cavaleiro and Knockaert cutting in from the wing on their strong foot. With that in mind, signing a Centre-Mid like Siliki who can overlap down the left-hand side and put a cross in would be a very good option to have and would add another dimension to how we want to play as it's different to what Johansen can offer us.

Siliki is close to my ideal signing this summer. He's only just turned 23 so provides long-term value for us- and he's already a very good player. To give an idea of his "level" I've seen reports linking him with Porto and Celtic. He wouldn't be cheap by any means I've seen fees of 7-8m being talked about, but if we want a quality long-term replacement for Johansen we'll need to spend.

Adama Traore (Monaco)
No, not that one. There was cause for some amusement during AFCON when Mali kicked off their campaign with Adama Traore starting and Adama Traore on the bench. Even more so when both Adama Traore's scored as they beat Mauritania 4-1. Neither Adama Traore that featured for Mali that day is the Wolves Adama Traore, even though the Wolves Adama Traore is eligible for Mali. The Adama Traore I want started, scored and assisted in that game, whereas the other Adama Traore who funnily enough was subbed on for the Adama Traore I want only scored. Is that clear enough?

Traore would be more of a budget option than Siliki, but a good option to have nonetheless. Traore's clearly surplus to requirements at Monaco considering they sent him out on loan in January, and given he's going into the last year of his contract you would imagine he'd be available for a pretty cheap price. There's a player in Traore as well, he was tipped to have a very bright future when he was at Lille- so if we could help unlock some of that potential (which we very feasibly could seeing as he's only just turned 24) we'd have a good player on our hands.

Those are the four areas I'd like to see us make a signing in before the transfer window is closed. A right-sided Centre-Back, cover Left-Back and two Centre-Mids. One a replacement for McDonald and one as competition/a replacement for Johansen. For the record, if we were to be in the market for a Right-Back my choices haven't changed from my Summer Window Preview of Nazim Sangare or Falaye Sacko. However, as long as we keep Steven Sessegnon- I genuinely don't see the need to sign a Right-Back. We can't complain about wanting to see our kids get more chances like I saw a lot of when players like Kait and Thorsteinsson left in May- but then demand a new signing when we have I'd argue three good options for Right-Back in our academy in Cody Drameh, Marlon Fossey and Steven Sessegnon.

Outs
Ryan Sessegnon
It actually isn't that much of a surprise to me that Sessegnon's still a Fulham player at the time of writing. I'm still expecting Sessegnon to go, but it's just the way Daniel Levy does things really. The one thing I will say about Levy in that sense is the last time he tried to mess us around and get a deal out of us on "his" terms, neither side ended up really "winning" as Spurs missed out on signing Dembele and we ended up losing Dembele for a 500k development fee.

As I've already said, I'm still expecting Sessegnon to go- and frankly I don't even necessarily think he'd be a regular starter for us were he to stay given we've pretty much built a team with his departure in mind. If he got his Championship Player of the Year form back of course he would be, but based on last season and the fact he's starting this season with an injury he'd have an uphill battle.

My hope is we can get Sessegnon sold with time to spare in case we're relying on the Sessegnon money for incoming business. But with that said if Daniel Levy messes us around and then comes in with a low offer on Deadline Day out of principle I'd genuinely rather run the risk of losing Sessegnon on a free next summer to somewhere abroad than accept the offer. Because if Sessegnon's preference truly is Spurs we'd get a tribunal fee that wouldn't be significantly less than what Spurs are offering anyway. Worst comes to worst we can always sell The Cottage to ourselves to cover us for FFP after all.

Steven Sessegnon
It's not really clear if Steven Sessegnon is going to be part of any potential deal taking Ryan Sessegnon to Spurs. The rumours have varied throughout the summer. There was a bit of concern when the team for West Ham came out and he wasn't anywhere to be seen given he started against Brighton the week before and was seemingly going to be our first choice Right-Back going into the season. However, from what I've read he apparently had a knock so there isn't much to read into in that sense.

I'd be very disappointed if we did let Steven go, he could genuinely have a breakthrough season with us next season because the Right-Back position is definitely up for grabs. Add on the fact that he's contracted to us until 2022 it means we don't have any immediate "need" to let Steven follow his brother to Spurs. Unless we've attached a ridiculous value to Steven to cover Ryan's diminished value so the package for both ends up as 35-40m.

Cyrus Christie
Speaking of the Right-Back position being up for grabs, I still think there's a chance we move Cyrus Christie on this summer. Christie was in the Starting XI for what I'd call the "Cup team" for the friendly against Oxford rather than the two games against Premier League teams either side of it, which to me suggests he won't be first choice next season. With that in mind, given Christie's at an age where he'll be looking to play every week- if someone came in with a decent enough offer I'd be willing to accept.

I said most of what I had to say about Christie in my Summer Window Preview, so I'll just repeat that it's probably best for all parties that Christie moves on and gets a fresh start without the baggage of last season. But if we do decide to keep Christie and have him and S. Sessegnon as our two options for Right-Back I'd be largely fine with that.

Fabri
It's not a surprise to me that Fabri's still here. Simply for the fact that the Turkish and Spanish transfer windows still have another month to go. This is one thing I hate about the English window closing early, because Fabri's wages off the books and a potential transfer/loan fee could mean another signing comes in, or a higher calibre of signing comes in- but if he signs for someone on the 31st of August what good does that do us in the immediate term?

I'll add that I genuinely want to see Fabri as our #1 next season, but given he's played about 25 minutes throughout the whole of Pre-Season that doesn't seem particularly likely. It's mental to me though. Imagine if we went down with statistically the worst Keeper in the league last season (Bettinelli) and someone said we'd sign a Keeper who's played in the Champions League and Europa League, won the Turkish League, is recommended by a former Goalkeeper coach and Leeds (our nearest rivals for the title according to the bookies) supposedly wanted to sign in January before opting for Kiko Casilla.

And we're writing that player off based on two games (one being Spurs away) behind an absolutely shambolic defence at the start of last season. I've seen some people bring up his height as a negative, but he's the exact same height as Jordan Pickford who while slightly erratic at times is doing alright for himself. I haven't seen Fabri take a penalty though.

Ibrahima Cisse
I said this in my Summer Window Preview, Ranieri saw something in Cisse- because he got him properly involved in the first team squad and even started him above Seri and McDonald at the Emirates. So if Parker also sees something in him and wants to use him, then fair enough. The negative of AFCON being in the summer in that sense is we genuinely don't know how involved Cisse will be, as he's pretty much missed the whole of Pre-Season being away with Guinea. Without any informed knowledge, I'm assuming Cisse's off whether that be a loan or permanent.

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Aleksandar Mitrovic's new contract
When talking about summer business, it's only right to talk about the best bit of business we could have done all summer. The three players I was resigned to losing this summer were Seri, Sessegnon and Mitrovic, and if someone offered that we could keep Mitrovic at the expensive of losing Zambo I would have taken that deal any day of the week. As long as he stays fit, Mitrovic should be in the mix for top scorer in the league next season without a shadow of a doubt. Especially with the options we have either side of him and behind him with Tom Cairney.

My one slight reservation is that I'm not entirely convinced he suits how Scott Parker would ideally want to set his team up. Especially at Championship level Mitrovic is good to the point where you adapt to accommodate him, but I think in an ideal world Parker would prefer a more mobile, pressing Striker. That could perhaps be why he's only scored 1 goal under Parker to date including Pre-Season (and that was a penalty). He'll still score a bagful of goals next season because of how good he is, but I'm not entirely convinced Parker will get the absolute best out of him- and that could very well be his undoing during his time in charge.
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New Kit Reaction
The new kits have grown on me over the course of the month or so they've been public knowledge. I like the home kit for how simple it is, and I like the away kit just for how it looks. My one annoyance is the Adidas logo on the away kit is central rather than on the side.

I feel like I always end up talking about betting sponsors in this section, so I'll repeat what I always say. Betting companies as sponsors are quite literally where the money is. Bar the Top 6 in the Premier League who can attract other brands, almost every club has a betting sponsor for their shirt. Until betting companies on shirts are banned, it's stupid to not go with the sponsor we can get the most money out of. As long as the team wearing the kit are winning football matches I couldn't care less what's on it.

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The Season Ahead
It's definitely going to be an interesting season, I think that's a safe assumption. The signings we've made and the players we've kept have made our Top 2 ambition pretty clear, but the signings we are yet to make mean that Top 2 is just an ambition rather than an expectation at this stage in my opinion.

It might be a reflection of my opinion of Scott Parker as a manager, but I'm very wary of the fact that we could become the flat-track bullies of the league next season- similar to West Brom last season. In that we could turn around one day when everything clicks and beat someone 8-1, but we could also end up having some pretty heavy defeats and the season could ultimately end in disappointment. With the quality of players we have, Top 6 is the absolute minimum for us this season- but whether or not we can push for Top 2 is dependant on our transfer business over this next week as well as how well Scott Parker can get us playing. The only thing to say on both of those points is "time will tell".

It's interesting for Scott Parker, because he's in a bit of a no-win situation in my opinion. If we do manage to go back up then it's "well obviously Fulham went up, they signed Knockaert and Cavaleiro and kept Mitrovic". And then if we don't it'll be "how has Scott Parker managed to not get promoted with Knockaert, Cavaleiro and Mitrovic up-front".

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Predictions
You may have seen my Championship prediction I posted on Twitter if you follow me, and as Fulham are involved in it I think it's worth repeating here.
I've predicted;
1st. Cardiff
2nd. West Brom
3rd. Leeds
4th. Fulham
5th. Stoke
6th. Brentford

I should say this is based on the players the clubs have as of writing this, because if Brentford lose Benrahma and/or Maupay then things would change. But as of writing this, that's my Top 6 prediction for the season with Leeds beating Brentford and us beating Stoke before Leeds beat us at Wembley.

Regardless of what happens, I'm looking forward to a new season of ups and hopefully significantly less downs. Depending on how much business we do between now and the deadline I might be back for a Transfer Window Review, but in the meantime thanks for reading as always. I always enjoy doing these blogs, so hopefully you enjoy reading them. Thanks again for reading, and let's make this season a good one.

Fulham: 19/20 Summer Window Preview

Well, it's safe to say that could've gone better. I'm not going to dwell on what is now last season too much, simply because everything worth saying has already been said multiple times over. Especially since the Watford game, and it's for that reason (and that this blog will be long enough as it is) that I'd rather look ahead to next season.

I had actually written a version of this post about a month ago in the direct aftermath of the Watford game, but I thought with so many things up in the air I'd let things breathe for a month and keep this blog until after the season was over. At least we know who's going to be in charge going into next season, so you're saved a paragraph of me talking about Mikel Arteta and Oscar Garcia as well as my ambitious "wildcard" (in every sense of the word) option of trying to get Jorge Sampaoli.

Looking ahead to this summer, I do think something important has to be said about the Khans. They've shown multiple times over that they're not the "take the money" types of owners, and as such I'm expecting to retain the core of a very good Championship team over the summer. Going all the way back to when we kept McCormack and Dembele in January 2016, the Khans are far from "selling owners". They could've taken the money for Cairney and Sessegnon multiple times over, but they didn't because it didn't benefit the team.

There will be sales over the summer of course, but I'm not expecting the fire sale that I've seen some people talk about. We've already seen evidence of this with Cairney signing a new deal, and while we may be saying goodbye to some players I'm expecting us to reinvest a reasonable amount of money back into the squad to replace the players we're losing.

Anyway, let's dive into the blog. As usual, I'm not necessarily expecting to sign these exact names- but it's the sort of profile of player I'd look at. Basically what my shortlist would be if I was in Tony Khan's shoes based on what I think we need over the summer.

Ins
Goalkeeper
We don't need to sign a Keeper this summer. We've got three very capable Keepers for the Championship at the club in Bettinelli, Fabri and Rodak, and given we'll need to spend on other positions there's really no need to spend on a new Keeper this summer. Even in the likely event that we lose one of them (more later).

Defenders
It's funny in a way, because in January we needed to pretty much sign Defenders exclusively and we ended up signing two wingers. Whereas this summer, I'm pretty relaxed about the defence. Bar Right-Back, you could even make a case for saying that our likely defence next season without any signings/departures is stronger than the one that got us up.

A lot of what I'm going to talk about in regard to signings is system dependant, because we don't really know what sort of Manager Scott Parker is yet and what his preferred formation is. As such, I've tried to choose players who would be comfortable playing in a three and four-at-the-back. Personally I'd look to sign a Right-Back to replace Cyrus Christie and a right-sided Centre-Back because Mawson, Le Marchand and Ream are all more comfortable on the left.

Fikayo Tomori (Chelsea)
Loans will always have their place in the Championship, it's just being overly reliant on them that can do you in- as we proved last summer. I hope Tony Khan's learned his lesson on this front, and we aim to "just" sign two or three players on loan to supplement a core squad of permanent, contracted Fulham players.

This specific loan suggestion could be completely moot if Derby can overturn Leeds' 1 goal advantage from the 1st Leg of their Play-Off match and then go on to win at Wembley. Tomori's had an absolutely exceptional season on loan from Chelsea, and should Derby manage to go up I'd imagine he stays with Derby on loan in the Premier League next season. However, if they don't go up his future may be a bit more up in the air. He might even end up staying at Chelsea with Gary Cahill leaving and Chelsea's transfer ban seemingly holding for this summer at the time of writing.

If Tomori was available though, we should be doing everything to be at the very front of the queue. The other potential loans for Centre-Back I was looking at were Michael Hector (Chelsea) who we've already been linked with, Mason Holgate (Everton) and a potentially unrealistic one in Juan Foyth (Spurs) who we could hypothetically try and sign on loan as part of a deal for Ryan Sessegnon with Parker's Spurs connection possibly coming into play.

Timo Letschert (Sassuolo/Utrecht)
Looking at permanent options now, and it's our first trip to the continent. I actually suggested signing Letschert before he signed for Sassuolo when he was first at Utrecht. An underwhelming spell at Sassuolo later (not helped by injuries) he was back on loan at Utrecht this season and he's had another pretty good season which has made me keen on signing him again.

Funnily enough, the moment that put him over the edge for me was actually something Letschert ended up getting subbed, dropped and fined for in a game that Utrecht lost 5-0. Utrecht were 3-0 down at Half-Time, and Letschert went into the dressing room and absolutely went off at his teammates. I want players in the dressing room next season who will hold other players accountable- because we had too many passengers this season. While it's clear Letschert went too far, I don't mind having players in the dressing room who will demand a certain standard from their teammates.

Utrecht have an option to buy as part of the loan deal with Sassuolo, but as Wolves and Stoke proved last summer with Benik Afobe activating a buy clause isn't a completely closed door in-terms of the player making another move in the same window.

Nazim Sangare (Antalyaspor)
Moving on to Right-Back now, and I've simply looked for someone who fits the "Ryan Fredericks profile". In that they're comfortable carrying the ball forward, comfortable overlapping and running in behind the defensive line, not afraid to take a player on and most important absolutely rapid.

The last time I suggested a full-back from the Turkish League in one of these was Barry Douglas two years ago. Douglas of course went on to have an absolutely exceptional season with Wolves. Introducing Nazim Sangare, who is pretty much as close to Fredericks as we could realistically look to get.

Sangare's on 2 goals and 4 assists for the season- and he's pretty much everything I'd look for in an attacking Right-Back (in my initial writing of this post a month ago I had a joke here about Sangare actually being able to score a goal, but then Fredericks went and scored for West Ham and blew that one). Sangare's one I'd hope we can act quickly on, because I've seen him being linked with a move to Fenerbahce and with only a year left on his contract making him very affordable I would imagine there'll be other suitors for him as well.

Falaye Sacko (Vitoria Guimaraes)
Sacko's similar to Sangare in a lot of ways. They both fit the "Fredericks profile" and they've both been linked with moves elsewhere already. In Sacko's case he's been linked with Reims in Ligue 1, and the price for him is again very good with 2-2.5 million Euros being the quoted price for him.

My personal preference of the two is Sangare, even with Sacko being pretty much a year younger. Simply because AFCON is this summer, and Sacko's going with Mali. While it may be naive of me to expect us to change the habit of a lifetime and get the majority of our transfer business done early, I'd like to avoid signing players going to AFCON when there's a very viable alternative like there is with Sangare who'll be available to us the day Pre-Season starts.

James Justin (Luton)
Justin's had an absolutely exceptional season with Luton, and he's one of the big reasons that we'll be playing them next season. There's a lot of upside with Justin in that he's 21, English and showing a lot of potential. I also believe that for the right price Luton would sell Justin, and I'd look at signing him if we could.

There's two ways we can go with the Justin signing. We could either sign him to be our starting Right-Back, or we could sign him as a cover full-back in addition to one of the two names mentioned above and ease him into the first team over the course of next season. The reason Justin would be ideal in a cover sense is that he's had his real breakthrough season at Left-Back, but he's naturally a Right-Back and he can play both comfortably.

Midfielders
As in the Defenders section, I've tried to cover a few bases in-terms of the type of Midfielder I've looked at- simply because we don't really know what system Scott Parker will favour. Tying Cairney down to a new deal is big, because it means we're pretty much set in-terms of having the #10 type player. As such I've looked to more defensive-minded Midfielders, because my assumption based on what we've seen so far from Parker is that he favours playing with a defined #10 and two defensive-midfielders behind.

I'd look at signing two defensive-mids to take us to four total with McDonald and Anguissa, and that then extends to three if we say goodbye to Zambo over the summer. Depth is important in the midfield area. Especially as even if we keep Zambo, he won't be starting for us on the first weekend of August because of his involvement with Cameroon at AFCON. Looking at the way the draw's fallen, I've got Cameroon getting to at least the Quarter Finals which takes his involvement there up until the 10th/11th of July as an absolute minimum. He'd then need a two or three week break after that before being brought back up to speed.

Oscar Lewicki (Malmo)
In direct contrast to Zambo in the sense that he won't be ready for the start of the season, you won't find someone more ready than Oscar Lewicki. Malmo are really in the infancy of their season, with the Allsvenskan played between April and November. As such, there wouldn't be any concerns about fitness levels and match fitness with Lewicki and he'd be the ideal player to sign with making a fast start to the season in mind.

Lewicki's fitness would have to be managed over the course of the season, because he can't essentially play Football for 12 months straight- but that goes back to depth and wanting four defensive-mids to use over the course of the season.

Lewicki's a very good player- to give an idea of his "level" he was being linked with Cardiff last summer and generally speaking most of Cardiff's signings last summer could be described as "top-end Championship" level signings. He's also shown so far this season that he's not a selfish player, he's a defensive-mid by trade, but he's ended up playing as the right Centre-Back of a three for Malmo so far this season.

Taras Romanczuk (Jagiellonia Bialystok)
For my money, Romanczuk is the best player in the Polish League. Romanczuk is pretty much everything I'd look for in a defensive-mid signing this summer. Going back to my point with Letschert, I want more leaders and characters in the dressing room next season and based on the player he was I think Scott Parker will too.

Romanczuk fits the bill perfectly in that he's a genuine leader in the midfield. He's similar to McDonald in that sense, but Romanczuk is a lot more mobile and covers a lot more ground. I think the phrase "captain's performance" is back in fashion after Vincent Kompany's goal last Monday effectively won Man City the title- and Romanczuk has had games like that throughout the season with his most notable performance being scoring twice in a Polish Cup Semi-Final (including a 90th minute winner) to take Jagiellonia to the final.

Ryan Woods (Stoke)
Closer to home now, Stoke need to be our example of what not to do this summer. They probably thought they were all but guaranteed to go up by keeping the likes of Joe Allen and Jack Butland and adding to them with some "big" Championship players like Benik Afobe and Ryan Woods (among others). It's not as simple as "just" keeping most of your best players and adding some Championship experience like a Harry Arter for instance. The mentality has to be right, the balance has to be there and the hunger has to be there- and in Stoke's case I think they just went for names.

Ryan Woods is one of the players where I'm not sure his face ever really fit at Stoke. He moved from a very possession-based Dean Smith Brentford team to a Gary Rowett Stoke team. I'm not sure how much possession Stoke averaged under Rowett specifically but over the course of the season they pretty much averaged 50% compared to his Brentford team the season before averaging around 55%.

Based on what we've seen so far it looks like Parker wants us to move back to a very possession-heavy style, and as such I think Ryan Woods would be a very good addition. He has Championship experience and he's almost definitely available given he wasn't even in most of Stoke's matchday squads towards the end of the season, most likely for less than Stoke bought him for as well (or maybe even on loan).

Andreas Geipl (Jahn Regensburg)
Stuart Webber's shown over the last three or four years with Huddersfield and Norwich that there's a lot of value in the Bundesliga. 2 if you know where to look.

This one is a very stats-based recommendation. For me, one of the big problems our midfield had was that it was just too passive. So how to rectify that? Look for a player who makes a lot of tackles. Geipl's averaged 3.9 tackles a game (our highest Midfielder this season averaging 2.1) for Regensburg over the last two seasons. To me he's the ideal squad player in the sense that he'll be cheap and offer us something completely different in that he's a "Kante" type defensive-midfielder whereas the other two we currently have in McDonald and Zambo are more suited to playing with the ball.

Geipl can take set-pieces as well which is a nice added bonus given we don't really have anyone who you'd call a "set-piece specialist" at the club.

Forwards
As I've already talked about, in January we needed to sign a load of new defenders and we ended up signing two wingers. Whereas this summer we're looking at losing pretty much every forward that's been relevant to the season, so watch us sign a whole new back four this summer and have Stefan Johansen back as a False-Nine in August.

There's two ways to approach this section. One where the Khans dig in on selling Aleksandar Mitrovic and Mitrovic doesn't agitate for a move- and the other more realistic one where we say goodbye to Mitrovic and have to replace him this summer. I've tried to cover a few bases in this section, because as I've already said we don't really know what system Parker wants to play. As such I've looked at wingers as well as different options depending on whether we want to play one or two up-front.

Personally I'd look to sign a new Winger to add to Ayite and Kebano, a new Target Man depending on where Mitrovic is playing his Football next season and a pressing forward who can either play up-front in a two, up-front on their own or on the wing. I want tactical versatility and different options simply put.

Darwin Machis (Udinese)
I primarily see Machis as a Winger, but it shouldn't be ignored that he's had probably the best run of his career primarily playing up-front in a two on loan from Udinese at Cadiz in Liga Adelante in the second half of the season. As I've already mentioned I want that versatility with our forward line next season, because I felt like we were too predictable a lot of times over the course of what is now last season and even in the first half of our promotion season.

Machis has scored 8 goals in the second half of the season with Cadiz after being a bit-part player for Udinese in the first half. To me, Machis is the ideal sort of player we should look at this summer in that he's a decent player, knows where the goal is, can play multiple positions and he should be reasonably affordable given he is just a bit-part player with his parent club.

The one downside with Machis is that he'll be going to the Copa America (featuring such South American teams as Qatar and Japan) with Venezuela this summer, but given he'd (hopefully) not be our only forward signing combined with the fact that Venezuela aren't likely to go far in the competition (famous last words) I'd still be pretty keen on signing him.

Fredrik Gulbrandsen (RB Salzburg)
When looking for value, Gulbrandsen is the absolute top of my list player for this summer. I've seen a lot of talk on forums and on Twitter about potential free agents- and it's the usual wanting to sign Premier League cast-offs or even with one name that I've seen mentioned in Gary Hooper Championship cast-offs. But generally speaking with those names there's a big reason to not sign them whether it be age, wages or just lack of quality.

Gulbrandsen is genuinely my ideal signing this summer. He's on a free from Salzburg, and he's everything we didn't have from a Forward in the season that's just finished. Gulbrandsen's primarily a Striker who can play on the wing if required, and for want of a better way to describe him he's a Jamie Vardy type player in that he's a "pressing" forward who also has the pace to run in behind a defence. Given he is on a free we wouldn't be the only team in for him of course. I've seen Gladbach and Fenerbahce as two potential destinations for him, but if the wages were right I would hope we could convince him to join.

Adrian Dalmau (Heracles)
Adrian Dalmau is similar to Gulbrandsen in the sense that he's a "pressing" forward, but he doesn't have the outright pace that Gulbrandsen does. In-terms of goals though, Dalmau is having a better season. At the time of writing this Dalmau has 19 goals (making him the 3rd top scorer in the Eredivisie), and is coming off the back of scoring a Hat-Trick and getting MOTM in a 5-4 defeat at the weekend.

Dalmau is a good player to look at signing because he'd be suited to either playing up-front on his own or with a partner. Dalmau wouldn't be extortionate in-terms of price either given his contract is up in 2020, with that said however I'd still prefer Gulbrandsen if it was a choice of the two given Gulbrandsen's quicker and he's on a free.

Oli McBurnie (Swansea)
Moving on to potential Aleksandar Mitrovic replacements now, and in my mind there's only one real option. McBurnie is about as close to Mitrovic as we could realistically get this summer. He's coming off the back of a 20+ goal season with Swansea, he knows the league, he's a good age and he's pretty much the ideal Target Man replacement. He's not as good as Mitrovic of course, but McBurnie wouldn't score significantly less goals than Mitrovic would for us next season and we could probably buy him for half (maybe even less) of what we sell Mitrovic for.

In fact, the only real problem I have with McBurnie is that he wears his socks low.

Vedat Muriqi (Rizespor)
McBurnie is my absolute #1 when looking for a Mitrovic replacement. There's no real debate about it as there is in my mind between Nazim Sangare and Falaye Sacko for instance. With that said, we won't be the only ones in for McBurnie this summer and if say a Sheffield United come in for him- we can't compete. In simple terms we could be on the other end of what we did to Villa with Joe Bryan last summer. As such, we do need to look at alternatives- and in doing so we're taking another trip to Turkey for another Fenerbahce linked player. I swear I haven't just gone on Fenerbahce message boards and made a list of all the players they're supposedly in for.

Muriqi is still a very good player, he's another Target Man and he's scored 15 goals for mid-table Rizespor this season with two games to go. The added thing to me with Muriqi is the fact that he's also on 7 assists which indicates his general play is very good. You would imagine Muriqi would be much cheaper than McBurnie this summer as well, so factoring that in- I definitely wouldn't turn my nose up were we to sign Muriqi this summer despite my preference of McBurnie.

Outs
Before diving into the players who are contracted to Fulham beyond the end of the Newcastle game, it goes without saying that we're saying goodbye to Sergio Rico, Havard Nordtveit, Timothy Fosu-Mensah, Calum Chambers, Andre Schurrle, Luciano Vietto, Lazar Markovic and Ryan Babel.

The only two I'd have a genuine interest in keeping are Chambers and Babel, and in Chambers' case he won't want to drop down to the Championship and we most likely couldn't afford him even if he did.

With Babel, I wish we could keep him- but I fully understand why we won't. Euro 2020 is most likely Babel's last chance of going to a major tournament. As such, he'll want to stay in a visible league to stay in Ronald Koeman's thoughts given he's competing with the likes of Quincy Promes and Steven Bergwijn. It seems Babel's going back to Turkey and is signing for Galatasaray. Which is fair enough in my book, it's a league he knows, and if Galatasaray win the Turkish League (currently 1st on goal difference) they'll be going straight into the Group Stage of the Champions League which again helps him in-terms of visibility.

Right then, let's move on to the players who could hypothetically be here next season.

Jean-Michael Seri
To give an idea of just how out the door Seri is, I'm 99% certain he wasn't even at the ground for the Newcastle game on Sunday. Given he's 5ft 6 he is very easy to miss, but I'm almost certain he wasn't there for the "lap of honour" after the game. I don't mind that though, especially with AFCON this summer I'd rather have Seri leave early than have him hanging around Motspur Park with no intentions of playing in the Championship in late July.

In Seri's defence, I don't believe he's a bad player. He just wasn't the right signing for us. Seri to me is the perfect example of the phrase "would've been better in a better team". Because Seri did have sporadic moments in the season where we saw the player that Xavi said had "Barcelona DNA", but through a combination of us being generally woeful (Seri included) and Seri being played so deep he couldn't really affect the game in the final third it just wasn't to be.

I don't think anyone really knows how much Seri cost us because of the way the deal with him and Le Marchand was structured, but I'd be disappointed if we didn't get 20 million for him- which is a massive amount for us in an FFP context.

Ryan Sessegnon
I think from a sentimental perspective, Sessegnon is the one who'll hurt the most when he's sold this summer. I've personally expected Sessegnon to be sold this summer since August last year, even if we did stay up. For the simple fact that while all of the other players key to our promotion signed new deals, Sessegnon's signature was always absent. It's also why I don't think Jokanovic would've been in charge with us next season in the hypothetical world where we didn't sack him, because even with his contract up this summer he was putting off signing a new deal.

I've seen a lot of criticism of Sessegnon this season, and it is true that he's had a very hard time of it. I pretty much expected it though, it's unfair to expect an 18 year old to go into their first ever year of top flight football and instantly rip the league up. Especially in a team as bad as we were.

For Sessegnon's development he needs to stay in the Premier League and just keep slogging away and improving playing at the top level. As I mentioned earlier, all signs point to Sessegnon going to Spurs- and I think that's the best move he can make at this stage of his career. Especially as Pochettino plays a three-at-the-back at times, he could find a home as an attacking left Wing-Back as he's rotated throughout the season. My hope is that we can get someone on loan as part of the deal, whether that be Juan Foyth as mentioned earlier or someone like Georges-Kevin Nkoudou if we wanted to go like-for-like.

Aleksandar Mitrovic
However unlikely it is, I do genuinely think there's a small chance of Mitrovic staying this summer. Mitrovic is pretty much the last player we can blame for how our season's unfolded, but with that said he's scored in three games since the end of November. That's not all his fault, because especially under Ranieri he was starved of service in quite a few games- but it's a fact. Especially towards the end of the season Mitrovic was missing easy chances as well, and that might have made a few Premier League teams think twice about spending the 30+ million we'll be asking for him.

I do think we'll sell Mitrovic this summer, and it's hard to be angry with him wanting consistent Premier League football when he's in the prime of his career.

Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa
Of all the potential outgoings this summer, Zambo is the only one where I'm genuinely not sure if they'll be staying or not. I'm working on the assumption that we'll be selling the three names above, and that should bring in at least 75-80 million and that in turn will put us into a position where we don't "have" to sell anyone else this summer.

As such, I'm not really sure what we have to gain by taking a loss on Zambo. We've seen glimpses of the player he can be, but not nearly enough to where we can expect to get anything close to what we spent on him. I think in Zambo's case it just comes down to how much the Khans dig in on keeping him, and how much Zambo and his agent agitate for a move. I personally really want us to keep him and think he can be a big player for us, but if he ends up refusing to train, play etc. then there's not much point.

Alfie Mawson
It's worth mentioning Mawson, just because I can see there being some interest in him. Particularly in my mind I can see Sheffield United being interested in him given he's pretty much the ideal central Centre-Back for a three given how comfortable he is on the ball and playing with both feet. With that said, I highly doubt he's sold this summer. Primarily because I can't see anyone putting in an offer that will make us want to sell him given he's spent about two-thirds of this season injured and he has back-to-back relegations on his CV now.

Fabri
I personally think Fabri had a pretty raw deal. He's never played in the Premier League before, he plays two games (one being Spurs away), behind an absolutely shambolic defence, makes an absolute boat load of saves and then he's never seen again.

The main criticism of Fabri was that he never really commanded his area, and that comes with confidence as much as anything else which you can understand his lack of given who was playing in front of him. I do think Fabri could be our #1 next season, and I personally think he's better than Bettinelli. With that all said, we can't keep Fabri and Bettinelli this summer, Bettinelli only signed a new deal in October and he has tenure with the club. It doesn't take a genius to work out which one of the two will be moving on this summer.

Cyrus Christie
I genuinely believe Christie could do a job for us in the Championship next season. However, I think Christie's now in the position Jazz Richards was in after Brentford away a couple of years ago where his position with the fans has gotten to the point where he can't carry on in a Fulham shirt. There's genuine groans whenever he gets the ball, and the ironic cheers I heard when he got taken off on Sunday tell the whole story. He got so much abuse after Palace away that he ended up deactivating his Twitter account for the best part of three months (and as of writing this blog he's deactivated it again).

I do think there will be takers for Christie this summer though, and I'd look at getting around 2 million for him which would essentially fund his replacement if we looked at Sangare or Sacko. Alternatively, we could use Christie as part of a deal for someone else. Specifically in my mind we could offer Christie plus money for Oli McBurnie- because I can see Swansea cashing in on Connor Roberts this summer leaving them needing a Right-Back.

Aboubakar Kamara
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but to see some people on Twitter talk about wanting Kamara back next season genuinely baffles me. He has pace, and that's pretty much it. We can find someone with pace pretty much anywhere, and none of those players will have been arrested at Motspur Park.

It's not just the incidents with Mitrovic and the one that got him arrested, I can also remember an interview with Cairney where he mentioned in a joking way that Kamara's always late to training. He just seems to be very unprofessional/immature, and he's not good enough to get away with it. While I will of course back him if he's lining up in a Fulham shirt next season, I just think he's burned his bridges with us too badly to make a return.

Rui Fonte
I'm genuinely not opposed to keeping Fonte next season. As I've already talked about, the dressing room balance has to be right next season- and Fonte showed in our promotion season that he's a very team-oriented, unselfish personality.

Especially if some of the stuff I've seen rumoured about Matt O'Riley and his agent are true, I'd look at using Fonte as Cairney's back-up in the #10 role next season.

Ibrahima Cisse
Ranieri clearly saw something in Cisse seeing as he was involved in some of his matchday squads and even got a start at the Emirates. So if Parker fancied him and wanted him involved in the sort of "4th" defensive-midfielder role I talked about with Andreas Geipl earlier then fair play.

I just can't see it though, and with his contract up in 2020 (albeit with a 1 year option) we should just cut our losses and try and get as much as we possibly can for him this summer.

Stefan Johansen
Talking of 1 year options, the news came out on Sunday that we'd activated the extensions in Kebano, Ayite, Odoi and Johansen's deals so they don't leave us on a free this summer. In the first three cases I think they'll be squad players for us next season and have been kept around because of their experience in the Championship as much as anything else.

In Johansen's case however, I think we've activated the option in his deal to sell him. Personally I can't see Johansen wanting to stay next season, for the same reason I didn't suggest signing Kalas and Piazon earlier. We effectively said to the three of them last summer that we'll let them do all of the hard work and the Burton Albion away on a Tuesday night games, and then when we reach the "promised land" we'll bin them off straight away in favour of more "trendy" players.

Especially in Johansen's case, considering Seri was literally the first player we signed- after we'd already tried to sign Thomas Delaney before that. I just can't see Johansen's mentality and commitment being right with us next season and with that in mind I'd look to move him on this summer. We should be looking to get 3-4 million for him though, because he is a very good Championship player- and it will be sad to see Johansen go given how big of a contribution he made to the two seasons prior to the Premier League one.

The Championship is going to be very tricky next season, the three relegated teams could all be challenging for the Top 6 next season in addition to three of the Play-Off teams and then Stoke, Sheffield Wednesday, Boro, Bristol City, Forest and Preston in particular could all have serious goes at the Top 6. And that's not even including the "surprise package" there always is in the Championship whether it's Millwall in our last season in the Championship or Norwich in the Championship season just gone. As such we need to get our business right this summer to stand a chance of going back up next season, and it's down to Tony Khan and Scott Parker to get that business done.

Thanks for reading as always, it's not the season anyone associated with Fulham hoped for of course- but I am still reasonably optimistic for next season. There was a level of naivety at every level of the club when we went down last time, but this time we're going down with our eyes wide open to what needs to be done to achieve promotion out of the Championship. At the very least we're not going to be signing Dino Fazlic, Adil Chihi and Mark Fotheringham level players this summer. Thanks again for reading, hopefully you have a good summer where you can forget this season ever happened before we go again in August.

Fulham: 18/19 Summer Window Preview

So then, have we all recovered from the weekend? It's that time of year again, when we all start googling the Belgian Second Division to work out who our next big signing will be. The difference this time is of course, we're a Premier League team again! As I'm sure most of you reading would've been, I was equal parts exhausted and elated at about 7pm on Saturday night. After a long 4 years, we're back in the promised land.

Of course being back in the Premier League, and the financial windfall that comes with it means we're in a whole other world when it comes to transfers and the players we can potentially sign. We're a very attractive option for players now. We're based in London, we're known to play "attractive" football, and we've got an ambitious owner who won't be afraid to spend when required. I'm not expecting us to go out and spend Top 6 level money or anything close to that, but I would hope/expect us to spend somewhere in the region of 60-80 Million to try and ensure that our stay in the Premier League isn't a short one. It's also vitally important we get into the market as soon as humanly possible, because with the World Cup taking up most of June and July and the window closing in early August there's a very limited time to make signings with us already starting later than Wolves and Cardiff.

As always with these blogs, I'll look at the areas that I believe we need to strengthen, and because we're in the Premier League you may have even heard of most of them this year- so we're already better off than this time last year. As always I'm not expecting to sign these specific names, and it's more talking about the profile of player we need to sign. I should also say I'm not expecting to sign everyone on this list, because if we did we'd end up bankrupt and thankfully we don't have Harry Redknapp as manager. For a lot of these sections I'd only expect to sign one, or at the most two players from each.

Ins

Goalkeeper
I'm really curious to see what happens in-terms of Goalkeepers for us this summer. I think a lot of it will come down to how much faith Jokanovic has in Bettinelli. His improvement this season has been immense, I won't deny that- but personally I'd like to see us sign a properly experienced Premier League proven Goalkeeper to either challenge or surpass Bettinelli next season.

Michel Vorm (Spurs)
There are quite a few names that fit the bill of "experienced Premier League Keeper" who'll be available this summer. Just off the top of my head there's Lukasz Fabianski, Joe Hart, Tom Heaton, Fraser Forster, Ben Foster and Simon Mignolet who will all be looking for first team Premier League football next season. But in the end I settled on Michel Vorm, simply because his contract at Spurs is running out and he'd be available on a free. We've not got an unlimited amount of money to spend, even after gaining promotion, so signing someone with the experience and quality of Michel Vorm to push Bettinelli and potentially come in for him on a free would be absolutely ideal to me.

Lovre Kalinic (Gent)
I talked about Kalinic last summer, so it's obvious I'm a big fan of him- but now we're in the Premier League I'd absolutely love for us to sign him. It was funny, I talked about him last summer and then he ended up being linked with a big money move to Leicester which obviously put him out of range for us. I do think we need to sign a new Keeper, and if we're wanting to sign someone to be a guaranteed #1 for us, I wouldn't look past Kalinic. It would be hard to look past him anyway because he's massive.

The one problem we'd have with Kalinic is he's going with Croatia to the World Cup, so would miss the first part of Pre-Season. But if we want to sign quality, we have to contend with the fact that said quality is World Cup level.

Defenders
I don't think many people would dispute that the defence is where we need to make some serious improvement in the summer. I personally believe that Fredericks and Ream's starting spots at the beginning of next season are sorted (assuming Fredericks signs a new deal and doesn't get a retrospective ban for the stamp on Grealish). But we need to add more depth pretty much everywhere, and make the defence a lot more solid if we're planning on staying up next season. Denis Odoi will always have a place in Fulham history for his goal that took us to Wembley, but if we start with Odoi at Centre-Back next season it won't be pretty.

Liam Moore (Reading)
I remember we were linked with Liam Moore in the season we went down when he was at Leicester, so it would sort of be full circle were we to sign him on our return to the top tier. I personally see this one as an absolute no brainer. From what I can tell Reading aren't in the best shape in-terms of FFP after their splurge on Aluko last summer so if a sufficient bid was made they'd sell, he's shown he's comfortable with the ball at his feet from when Jaap Stam was managing Reading- and first and foremost he's a damn good Centre-Back.

I saw last week that Brighton had supposedly bid for him, whether that's true or not is another matter entirely. But were we to bid for him, I would hope he'd favour us because it wouldn't be as hard to break into our starting eleven as it would be to dislodge either Dunk or Duffy.

Fabian Schar (Deportivo)
Deportivo were one of the teams relegated from La Liga last season, and as such the mass exits from said clubs are to be expected. Florin Andone has already gone through the exit door and signed for Brighton (for about a third of what Deportivo quoted Brighton last summer), and if I were Tony Khan I'd be making sure Schar was another player who was leaving Deportivo for the Premier League. As is the case with Liam Moore, Schar is a very "Fulham" profile signing. He's a good age, comfortable with the ball at his feet and just a generally technically gifted defender- and he'd be available for a pretty reasonable fee as a result of Deportivo's relegation.

Schar has made the preliminary 26-man Swiss squad for the World Cup, and he'll most likely be going to Russia- so that would be the only issue when it comes to Pre-Season preparations but I'd be all for his signing.

Christian Luyindama (Standard Liege)
I'd see Liam Moore and Schar as the starting Centre-Back next to Tim Ream for next season. This signing would be more of a depth option, but also with the potential to become a starter for us. Luyindama was one of, if not the best Centre-Back in the Belgian League last season. What makes him an attractive signing to me is the fact he's young (24), he's tall at 6'2-6'3, and he's been converted from a Midfielder into a Centre-Back at Standard Liege which should make him an ideal candidate to play in our back line given our need to have ball-playing Centre-Backs. Coming from the Belgian League he'd also be relatively cheap, plus what would one of these blogs be without a trip to Belgium?

Matt Targett (Southampton)
As of writing this, we don't actually have a Left-Back as a result of Targett's loan ending. He's the obvious one really isn't he? With Southampton staying up, I had hopes we could re-sign Targett even before we were promoted- and now with us both being in the Premier League it should make signing him that little bit easier.

The three questions I'd have would be; will Southampton sell Ryan Bertrand this summer? Because if they do then Targett may well be lining up against us rather than for us next season. I think it's too early to know too much about the transfer market, but Targett's tweet today may indicate that is the case. Also, how much will Southampton want for him? He's got a contract with them until 2022, and knowing that we'd want him- even with Bertrand they wouldn't let him go cheap. The other, simply, is whether Targett's good enough to be a regular starter in the Premier League.

Targett's been brilliant since we signed him in January, but moving up to the Premier League is a whole other world in-terms of being a Full-Back. Especially with a side like ours where we play on the front foot so often, being a Full-Back in the team is the easy part. You've got very little defensive responsibility in most games and the emphasis is more on the attacking side of the game. It's also the question I'd have for Fredericks next season, because pace won't be enough to make up for some of his defensive shortcomings when we come up against the Hazard's, Sane's etc. because they're just as quick as he is.

We simply won't be able to play like that in quite a few games next season- so the question has to be asked. I'd happily be proven wrong, because I really like him- and as already said he's been brilliant since we signed him. Worst comes to worst and we do go straight back down we'd have one of the best Left-Backs in the league again should we sign him as well.

Joe Bryan (Bristol City)
Looking at alternatives for Targett, and you don't have to look that far for a very good alternative. While Bristol City's season fizzled out by about March, Joe Bryan was one of the undoubted highlights. He finished the season with 5 Goals and 3 Assists, which for a Left-Back is pretty good. But he's also been quite good defensively, and he might end up being cheaper than Targett because of his long contract.

I saw the 6 Million figure being talked about in relation to Bryan and a supposed bid from Burnley, which in this market I'd say is very good value. Especially for an exclusively domestic transfer which automatically increases the prices being talked about.

Jetro Willems (Eintracht Frankfurt)
If we do look abroad for our Left-Back signing, my hope is we stop in Germany and look at the Frankfurt Left-Back Jetro Willems. Willems is someone who's been on the radar of football fans for quite a while now, despite his relatively young age. He broke through with PSV relatively early, and in those early stages of his career I believe he was linked with Man Utd around the time they moved Evra on. However two or three years ago he picked up a really bad injury, and that set him back a long way.

But, he's picked himself up after signing for Frankfurt and played 23 games for them this season- and were we to get him back to his best he'd be one of the signings of the season in the whole league not just for us. He's not that unrealistic of a signing either. Between the lure of the Premier League, and the fact I'm expecting Frankfurt's team to be torn apart as a result of Niko Kovac going to Bayern- even with Frankfurt qualifying for the Europa League. This has already started with Keeper Lukas Hradecky signing for Leverkusen from Frankfurt.

Midfielders
As with Bettinelli, I'm curious to see just how much faith Jokanovic has in the current midfield three of McDonald, Cairney and Johansen to impose themselves on the Premier League. Personally I think McDonald and Cairney will be starting and Johansen will be benched. Either way, we need to add some more quality to the team because Matt O'Riley won't be ready to play Premier League football and I can't imagine Ibrahima Cisse will be hanging around for too long now the season's over.

Oliver Norwood (Brighton)
He's worth the discussion. In his interview after the game on Saturday he made it clear that he'd like to stay with us- and we can do worse as a Midfield depth option. He'd have a use for us, even in the Premier League albeit I wouldn't want him to start anything more than the Cup games and maybe one or two over the busy Christmas fixtures. Depending on the price I'd be fine with us signing him permanently, so it's over to Norwood and his agent to make it happen.

Thomas Delaney (Werder Bremen)
Going back to the Bundesliga now, and the player I'd be signing to come in as an upgrade on Johansen. I'm pretty sure we were linked with Delaney a few summers ago when he was still at Copenhagen, and he's only gone from strength to strength since then. Delaney's coming off the back of a very good 18 Months for Bremen since signing for them and he's currently gearing up for the World Cup with Denmark.

Delaney would be pretty much the ideal midfielder for us and how we play in my opinion. I've seen that Brighton are supposedly in for him, with Bremen supposedly turning down a 10 Million pound bid so he won't be cheap- but given how key the midfield is to how we play we can't afford to go for a cheap option when trying to upgrade.

Badou Ndiaye (Stoke)
Another player who's World Cup bound is Badou Ndiaye from Stoke. Even with Stoke going down, Ndiaye managed to actually have an impressive introduction to the Premier League since signing for Stoke in January. He'd be very much the engine type player that Johansen's been for us over the last two seasons and his added physicality and general quality would be very welcome to the team. Unfortunately for us, he's impressed so much that we wouldn't be the only takers for him. I saw West Ham supposedly want him, and their budget would be a lot bigger in these circumstances- and they'd be a more attractive option for Ndiaye given how established they are as a Premier League club with established players and the addition of Manuel Pellegrini.

Marco van Ginkel (Chelsea)
Staying in England, and for a third summer in a row I'd have us going back to Chelsea for one of their loan army. The difference being I'd want this one to be a permanent move. Marco van Ginkel has been one of the many Chelsea players who have always been on the periphery thanks to their loan farm system, but I'd be all for taking a chance on him on a permanent deal for next season.

He's coming off of being the key man in PSV's Eredivisie title win, captaining the side despite being on loan and scoring 14 goals in the process would make him a very attractive player for us. That combined with the fact Chelsea are supposedly demanding 10 million for him, which is supposedly out of PSV's price range- but to me represents a bargain in the current market would make me very keen on him. Plus, he's had previous Premier League experience both with Chelsea and Stoke and I'm sure Jokanovic will be wanting players with said experience added to the squad.

Mijat Gacinovic (Eintracht Frankfurt)
The first Serbian on this list, and one you may know of- even if you don't know the name. Gacinovic was the player who scored Frankfurt's third goal against Bayern in the German Cup final to put the tie to bed in the last minute just over a week ago.

He'd be another player I'd look at as an upgrade for Johansen, and he has all of the attributes to prove a quality signing for us. He's another player World Cup bound, and although he may not start for them- being behind Sergej Milinkovic-Savic, Nemanja Matic and Luka Milivojevic isn't an indictment on him. Gacinovic can also play out wide if required, and as I'll talk about more later, having someone who's versatile could be invaluable to the squad.

Valon Berisha (RB Salzburg)
One of the highlights of Salzburg's surprise Europa League run was the performances of Kosovan international Berisha. To be blunt, Berisha is absolutely top drawer, and he's proven it consistently this season in the Austrian Bundesliga as well as in the Europa League. As is the case with Ndiaye, he wouldn't be cheap, and we wouldn't be the only takers for him- but if we wanted to show some proper ambition in the transfer market signing someone like Berisha whose quality is undoubted would be a real statement of intent.

The main selling point for Berisha to me, other than his general quality is the fact he's also versatile. Berisha can play centrally or out wide, and that sort of versatility can be a real plus from a tactical standpoint- because we can't stick with the 4-3-3 for every game next season and expect results.

Wingers
Another area where we need to strengthen significantly is on the wings. I personally don't think any of Ayite, Kebano or AK47 are good enough to start for us next season. So we need to sign a Right-Winger that can start for us. I also think we need to add depth at LW, because while Ryan Sessegnon's had an exceptional season for us this season- I don't think he should be starting every game next season. In short, we need to manage him perhaps better than we did this season because I don't think many would dispute he looked quite burned out by around the end of March/beginning of April.

Adama Traore (Middlesbrough)
My first choice for the Right-Wing position would be Adama Traore. With Boro staying down in the Championship, I'd think Traore would be available at the right price- and I genuinely believe that Jokanovic could carry on what Tony Pulis has started with Traore in managing to harness his absolutely unbelievable pace and skill and developing an end product to go with it. You only have to look at how AK47 has improved from where he was at the start of the season to where he was starting at Wembley on Saturday.

As I've said already, domestic transfers are never as cheap as they should be. Especially in the case of someone like Traore who's so important to Boro- but I'd absolutely love if we could sign him because he can terrorise defences on any given day. As perfectly exampled by when we played Boro in January.

Another domestic signing I thought we could look at for the Right-Wing spot is Oliver Burke at West Brom, but I think he may be better off with a season in the Championship playing regularly rather than going straight back into the Premier League where he failed to make an impact last season.

Amath Diedhiou (Getafe)
This is a story that isn't fully relevant, but I'll still tell it anyway. When we played Bolton away in February I was actually in Barcelona for a weekend away. I did the usual touristy stuff, and then on the Sunday I went to see Barcelona play Getafe at the Nou Camp. Expecting to see a masterclass from the likes of Messi, Suarez, Coutinho, Dembele etc. I left the Nou Camp most impressed with someone who I'd never heard of before in Amath Diedhiou from Getafe.

From what I saw he was a very direct winger in that he was never afraid to take someone on and run at them, which is the perfect fit for us in my opinion. Despite being Senegalese, he's also not been included in their World Cup squad which to me is a bonus because it would make him fully available for Pre-Season preparations. As I've made a point of throughout this blog as well, Diedhiou is also versatile. He can play Left-Wing (which he did against Barcelona), but he can also play up-front and given he's Right-Footed he could play on the right pretty comfortably as well in my opinion.

Iuri Medeiros (Sporting CP)
Another player who's making a second appearance in one of these transfer blogs is Iuri Medeiros. He's still just not broken through with Sporting despite his quality, and now that we're in the Premier League I'd imagine we'd be a more attractive proposition to him given the fact he's not broken through with Sporting and spent the second half of the season out on loan again (this time at Genoa). Although given the fact he's Portuguese I'd assume Wolves have first option on him.

Emiliano Rigoni (Zenit)
I'm interested to see what happens at Zenit over the summer. The size of investment Zenit have had over the last decade to me has been an example of the attempt to improve the domestic Russian game and players to the point where they're competitive for this year's World Cup. It's just a theory, but I wouldn't be surprised to see an exodus of some degree of the Russian clubs over the next year or two once the World Cup is done. Especially with a club like Zenit who are backed by government companies. That combined with the fact that as of writing Zenit are manager-less after Roberto Mancini left them to take the Italy job means someone like Rigoni could be available.

Rigoni would be close to the ideal signing in my opinion. He's comfortable playing on either wing, and crucially he knows where the goal is. He top scored in the Europa League Group Stages alongside his teammate Aleksandr Kokorin, although he didn't actually score any league goals for Zenit. But I wouldn't let that deter me from trying to sign him, the fact he got called up for Argentina last October and made his international debut should highlight that he does have something about him worth pursuing.

Strikers
The key to any promoted club staying up is having someone who knows where the back of the net is. I actually think the Premier League will suit Rui Fonte more, but at the same time I wouldn't want to take a chance on him starting for us. The second half of the season has shown exactly the type of Striker we need to maximise our potential and get the best out of the rest of the team. I personally think we need to sign two Strikers in addition to Fonte and AK47 to be completely confident of our chances next season. Whether that's two Strikers of the same build, or two different ones I'm not entirely sure to be honest.

Aleksandar Mitrovic (Newcastle)
The player that showed that was Aleksandar Mitrovic, and in my opinion he'll go down as one of the best signings in Fulham history for his 4-5 months he's spent with us this season. Even though he didn't actually score in any of the three Play-Off games, his hold-up play was arguably just as important- especially in the last twenty minutes of the Villa game when we were down to 10 men. To put it simply, Mitrovic is the perfect player for us and it's a win-win situation because Mitrovic knows he has a home here with us. Especially with Jokanovic in charge he just fits here. He wouldn't be cheap. We'd probably be looking at around 20 million for him, but given his age and what the market for Strikers is like nowadays I wouldn't even say 20 million is an excessive amount for him.

My hope is we can push the deal through before the World Cup, because all we need is for Mitrovic to score a couple against Brazil and there's suddenly another 10 million on his price tag that could potentially price us out of the move which would be a shame.

Moussa Dembele (Celtic)
Looking at alternatives/additions for Mitrovic, and one player that I'd like to see us consider is a very familiar name to us Fulham fans. Dembele's not been helped by injury problems in this last season, which has perhaps made his stock fall a bit in the sense that rather than being linked with Man Utd and Spurs he was being linked to Brighton in the January window. However, that could play into our hands this summer.

After spending two years in Scotland playing European football, I'd say Dembele's now at the age where he should be looking at getting his feet under table in the Premier League to really kick on to the next level by playing the elite teams that comes with it. So where better to do so than with Fulham? Especially considering we'd be a very familiar set-up for him to bed in as he takes the step up to the Premier League and he'll know a few of the players and of course the coaching staff from his previous time with us.

It may just be a bit of a fantasy, but it's one I'd like to see realised- because I've always rated Dembele and said he'd be in the Premier League with or without us. So now we are, I hope he can come along for the ride.

Salomon Rondon (West Brom)
When talking about Mitrovic and Dembele, the cost of them isn't really known. They're both highly rated young players, and as such aren't going to be cheap. In the case of Rondon he has a known release clause of 16 million as a result of West Brom's relegation. Some people may see Rondon's name and price-tag and sneer at it, because he's not exactly a prolific goalscorer. However, for how we play he's the ideal target man. I'd go as far as to say he's a better target man than Mitrovic, and he's also scored more Premier League goals than him.

If there was a preference I'd take Mitrovic because he's younger and he's already been with the club- but Rondon would be a very, very good alternative. In short, Rondon is the "coaches dream" sort of player with how he operates on the pitch, which is why I imagine Tony Pulis kept faith in him for their entire time together at West Brom despite Rondon's lack of goals at times.

Outs
Moving onto the "outs" section now, and for a change in these Transfer Window previews it's not full of angst over us potentially losing our best players. In-terms of the outs for this summer I think for the most part it'll be about trimming the fat from our current squad and making room for better, more Premier League ready alternatives. I've made a point to talk about "significant" outgoings, because the likes of Luca de la Torre, Matt O'Riley and Steven Sessegnon I could see us loaning out but they've not really made a proper impact on the first team this season.

Firstly, on the loans front I don't see any need for Kalas, Ojo or Piazon to come back now we've been promoted. Especially in Kalas and Piazon's case, they've played their part in the last two exceptional seasons- but given the fact they were rotation options at best in the Championship for us I can't see them making the step up to the Premier League with us.

Ryan Sessegnon
With that said, even with a promotion under our belts the Sessegnon to "big club" rumours won't stop this summer. I'm actually not fully convinced we won't sell him to be honest. My reasoning being that the top Premier League clubs will look at Sessegnon being worth 40-50 Million now and maybe think it's excessive, but at the same time think about how much he could be worth if he performs for us next season, scores some goals in the Premier League and maybe picks up one or two England caps.

I do think Sessegnon will be playing in a Fulham shirt next season, but whether that's as a contracted Fulham player or after being loaned back by a Man Utd or a Man City remains to be seen.

Ryan Fredericks
It's worth putting Fredericks' name in this part, just because as of writing this he hasn't signed a new contract yet. I do expect him to sign one, especially now that we're a Premier League team- but you never know, a club like West Ham might come in with a ridiculous wage offer that we can't match and he moves on. I don't think it's likely, but until he puts pen to paper it could happen.

David Button
This is more of a "trimming the fat" sale than the previous two. At this stage of his career, Button will want to be playing football- and especially now we've gone up we simply can't offer that to him. I do think fans have been harsh on Button at times, because there was a noticeable improvement in him at the start of the season. However, you can't argue with results and Bettinelli coming in coinciding with us going on the run that got us promoted isn't a coincidence. I do think Button is a solid Championship Keeper though, and there will be takers for him especially at a cut price that I'd assume he'd be available for.

I've talked about wanting to sign a new Keeper in the "ins" section, but even if we didn't having Marek Rodak as a #2 for a season would be fine with me.

Neeskens Kebano
It's hard to say anything negative about Jokanovic after he's brought us up, but his treatment of Kebano has been a bit disappointing to me. He could've been a very useful squad player for us in the run-in for the season, and perhaps given Sessegnon a break in a game or two to try and keep him a bit fresher for the Play-Offs. As I say though, it's hard to question it, because it worked and we're up. I do think we'll be saying goodbye to Neeskens this summer though, because he's more than good enough to be a starter somewhere.

Ibrahima Cisse
One of the forgotten men of this season is Ibrahima Cisse. Those Pre-Season games where Cisse was banging in long shots off the bar seem like lifetimes ago. As with Kebano, he's definitely good enough to start somewhere- but the fact he wasn't even in the 18 on Saturday says a lot.

Cauley Woodrow
Remember him? I would've expected Woodrow to move on this summer even if we'd stayed down. The fact he's spent the last 18 months of his Fulham career out on loan with Burton and Bristol City should say it all really. He's nowhere near Premier League quality, and he's not even that young anywhere at 23 turning 24 in December. I'd be interested to see where he ended up, because under the right set of circumstances I do think he could be a starter for a mid-table Championship team, but he's nowhere near the standard we need for next season.

Rui Fonte
As I've already said earlier, I think the Premier League is actually more suited to Rui Fonte than the Championship. With some exceptions it generally favours a more technically gifted, perhaps not as physical player of which Fonte is. As such I'd actually like to see him stay and either use him as an option up-front or maybe even push him into a deeper Midfield role, because his football brain can't be called into question. Whether Fonte would be happy with that is another question entirely though, and if he wanted to move on or got an offer he couldn't refuse from somewhere I don't think we'd stand in his way.

That's that then. Another Summer Window Preview is in the books, and the first of hopefully many in that I'm looking forward to a season in the Premier League. Hopefully you all enjoy your summers and the World Cup before we all come back to the Cottage bright eyed and bushy tailed in early August. Thanks for reading as always, I always enjoy writing these posts- and hopefully you enjoy reading them as well. Thanks again. WE'RE GOING UP!