Fulham could prove inspiration for Stoke City after a poor start to the season.
Stoke City manager Gary Rowett suggests his side can emulate Fulham by overcoming a poor start and securing promotion to the Premier League come the end of the season, Sky Sports report.
“If you look at Fulham last year. Around this time people were calling for Slavisa Jokanovic’s head, and what an unbelievable turnaround they had,” Rowett told reporters.
“It can happen quickly when you’ve got the type of quality we know we’ve got in our group. But what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to give ourselves a chance by having a solid base.”
Can Stoke City emulate Fulham?
Drawing inspiration from Fulham’s promotion to the Premier League last season may give Rowett confidence he can turn things around at Stoke, but in truth their situations are entirely different.
Fulham had reached the Championship playoffs on the 2016-17 campaign, therefore boss Slavisa Jokanovic already had plenty of pieces of the promotion jigsaw in place with just the finishing touches missing.
The Cottagers, despite not getting the right results early on, still looked a side capable of challenging for promotion and the loan signing of Aleksandar Mitrovic proved the catalyst for their success.
Stoke, in contrast, haven’t been used to consistently winning football matches for several seasons and under Rowett they are still learning his methods – unlike Jokanovic who had already been at Fulham for 18 months.
The Potters aren’t looking dangerous going forward as they lie 18th in the table in terms of average shots per game, while only one Championship club has conceded more goals from their opening nine games.
With just two wins so far, the Potters have been really underwhelming as they look for an immediate return to the Premier League and the squad looks as though it needs a thorough rebuild before it can even contemplate a potential promotion challenge.
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