Fulham's Form: The Opta Take

Fulham’s relentless start to 2022 has not got unnoticed in the wider footballing world.

Scoring a minimum of six times in three consecutive league games is not a regular occurrence, neither is hitting the 70-goal mark by mid-January.

And so Matt Furniss, Senior Data Editor with statistics gurus Opta, has taken a look at just how our numbers stack up.

• The below has been taken – with permission – from Matt’s original article, which can be viewed in full here: theanalyst.com/fulham-goal-record

Fulham so far in 2021/22

Fulham’s tally of 70 goals is by far the most across the professional leagues in England so far this season. It’s 15 ahead of Liverpool and 26 more than the next highest-scoring Championship club, Blackburn Rovers (44). Marco Silva’s side have also unsurprisingly created the best chances per game both overall (2.22 xG) and from non-penalty shots (2.07 xG) in the Championship this season.

With them benefitting from three own goals, Fulham players have scored 67 of those goals from an expected goals total of 57.8, with their overperformance of 12.2 also being the highest across the top four tiers in England as it stands.

The Whites are the first team in England to score 70 or more goals in 26 league games since Manchester City in the 2017/18 Premier League (74), while they are the first to do so in the second tier of English league football at this stage of a season since Sheffield Wednesday in 1958/59 (74).

14 different Fulham players have scored a goal in the Championship this season – the highest tally of scorers by a team in the second tier, but outdone by Chelsea (16), Manchester City (16), Fleetwood Town (16) and Liverpool (15) across the top four tiers.

Of course, the main source of those goals has been Aleksandar Mitrović, with the Serb scoring 27 Championship goals this season and currently the highest-scoring player across the top four tiers in England.

What a way to start the year

Exceptional, in fact.

Fulham’s three Championship matches in 2022 so far have seen them beat Reading 7-0 away, followed by back-to-back 6-2 wins at Craven Cottage against Bristol City and Birmingham City.

Winning consecutive league games 6-2 is obviously rare, but Fulham’s feat was the first time it’s happened in English league history in just over 60 years, since September 1961:

Fulham’s three wins in January have come over the space of just eight days – this is the quickest period that an English Football League club have scored six or more goals in three competitive games in history, beating the previous record set by Arsenal across 11 days between October and November 1932.

So, how ridiculous could Fulham’s January get? They have two more Championship games scheduled in the month: away to Stoke City and at home against Blackpool. If they score six more goals across these two matches, they’d be the first team to score 25 or more goals across a single month of action in the second tier of English league football since Bolton Wanderers in September 1964 (28), while the last team to score more than 20 goals in the second level across a single month were Watford in April 1996 (22).

The English Football League record for goals in a single month? That would be Chester in February 1936, who scored 32 goals. Fulham would need to score 13 goals across those two matches versus Stoke and Blackpool to match this tally, but ridiculously, it can’t be ruled out with their current form.

Seasonal records

The Whites’ current club record for goals within a single English Football League season stands at 111 in 1931/32’s title-winning Third Division South campaign – one of only two occasions that they’ve reached a century of goals in a single league season, alongside 1928/29 (101) in the same competition.

Fulham’s promotion-winning Championship season in 2017/18 saw them score 79 times (excluding Play-Offs) – fewer than the season before (85 goals) when they eventually lost out in the Play-Offs to Reading. Their last title-winning campaign in 2000/01 saw them score 90 league goals – a tally that they’ll now only need to average a goal a game to replicate this time around.

Many thanks to Matt and the Opta team for allowing us republication of this piece.