Jamie’s report on our defeat at Blackburn is well worth a read. I was particularly interested in his concluding paragraph:
A shame. Roy Hodgson is rightly talked of as one of our greatest managers and has presided over a period of unprecedented success. But, like pretty much every side we’ve produced since promotion in 2001, Roy’s Fulham are generally only able to win at one ground. We’ve now failed to beat all of Wolves, West Ham, Wigan, Birmingham, Burnley, Stoke and Blackburn on the road this year. And sadly, it’s spoiling what could have been another marvellous season.
He’s pretty much right. But it set my mind racing. Rich has been busy looking at our away stats, but I’m interested in the breakdown of our away league wins.
Things weren’t much better under Jean Tigana, footballing genius that he was. We won just four out of 35 league games under the Frenchman and all bar one came in our first season back:
2001-02
West Ham 2-0
Derby 1-0
Leeds 1-0
2002-03
Sunderland 3-0
4 out of 35 gave Tigana a success rate of just 11%.
Chris Coleman got a single win when he was in temporary charge (thanks to a Louis Saha strike at Charlton – 1-0). Things got a little better the following season when we astonished everyone by finishing ninth:
2003/04
Tottenham 3-0
Blackburn 2-0
Man Utd 3-1
Leicester 2-0
Bolton 2-0
2003/04
Newcastle 4-1
Norwich 1-0
Birmingham 2-1
Blackburn 3-1
We had to wait until 2006 for our next victory on the road, secured by Brian McBride and Carlos Bocanegra, a 2-1 win at Newcastle, made bittersweet by Jimmy Bullard’s horrible injury. It was Coleman’s last away success, leaving him with 11 wins from 66 league games – a strike rate of 16%.
Poor old Lawrie Sanchez didn’t muster an away win.
Roy Hodgson’s was a long time in coming, but once Erik Nevland secured success at Reading we didn’t seem to look back:
2007/08
Reading 2-0
Man City 3-2
Portsmouth 1-0
We had a bit of success the following season too, once we opened up a bit away from home:
2008/09
Bolton 3-1
Man City 3-1
Newcastle 1-0
That leaves our single success this term on the opening day at Fratton Park (thanks to Bobby Zamora’s backside), to give Roy seven away wins from 41 league games (17%). Chuck in the win in Basel, which I ignored for methodological reasons (Tigana’s team beat a host of lower league opponents on our way to the Cup semi-finals in 2002) and the record’s more impressive. Hodgson’s teams have amassed more away points on average than Tigana’s, Coleman’s, Sanchez’s and – yes, of course – Lewington’s. That last one’s not hard.
It’s all rather predictable. We haven’t won enough away from home. How do you sort it? That’s an entirely different question.
Great breakdown. It does seem to be a trend for us! However, not that many teams have a supurb away record. Obviously I should think that we would need to improve it a bit but lets just remember that if our away record was the seem as our home record we would prob be in the top 4 right now and we are obviously not there yet!!
Lets all just calm down and hope that Roy buys a striker!
I think what a lot of people are forgetting is that many teams in the league have similar problems to Fulham. They have excellent home records, but away from home they struggle. It’s just the nature of the league at the moment. Under Hodgson, Fulham have finished above these teams because we have been more consistent in winning home games – ultimately, this is much more important than winning the odd away game. Obviously we all want the club to progress and to win more games away from home. But I don’t think that this is a particularly Fulham-related issue. Outside of Chelsea/ManU/Arsenal, every other side is poor on the road. Whether this is a widespread mental problem or a sign of the strength and competitiveness of the league, I’m not sure.
It’s a good point, but I haven’t checked our opponents’ away records for a while. I wonder if it is because the league’s getting tighter but it doesn’t excuse our lack of results on the road for such a long period now.