Fulham's five worst Premier League starts

Three weeks to sit and stew on our rather low points tally of two. It's quite easy to wallow in the doom and gloom and worry about where we are after five games.

The reality is, the table can flip on a dime and suddenly a win or two helps to alleviate that mounting pressure. While we've had a few years flirting with the potential prospect of European football, the reality of every season starts the same - hit that magic 40-point mark and go from there.

With that in mind, I thought I'd take a look at some of our other slow starts and whether where we were after five games actually mattered in the end or not, here's the top (or bottom) five. A points tally we've obtained on four separate occasions (yes I know that makes more than five, but blame Fulham for being consistently inconsistent at the start of seasons).

Interestingly, in three of these four we've either been relegated or stayed up on the final day. The only outlier here was in 2004-05, which started with an Andy Cole brace in a 2-0 win over Bolton Wanderers and a Collins John leveler at the City of Manchester Stadium.

A good start of four from our opening two was met by defeat to Europe-bound Middlesborough, domestic double-winning Arsenal and coming out on the wrong side of a 4-3 thriller at Fratton Park. In hindsight, that was actually a decent return in a season that seemed to kick into life in the new year, with Chris Coleman's side finishing 13th while also going relatively deep into both cup competitions.

The other three saw Fulham go through a combined eight managers and flatter to deceive for the most part. We'll start (begrudgingly) with Lawrie Sanchez's Fulham who again didn't actually start "that" poorly with a win at home to Bolton as well as a point at the Cottage against Tottenham.

Defeats to Arsenal, Middlesborough and Aston Villa were sandwiched in-between with Fulham going on to pick up points in six of the following seven fixtures. It all fell apart for Fulham after that though with just one win from the next 17!

Hodgson did turn it around and we all know what happened next. We weren't quite as fortunate in the other two campaigns.

In 2013-14, Fulham started the season with a 1-0 win away at the Stadium of Light followed by defeats at Arsenal and at home to Newcastle United. A point (which should've been three) at home to West Brom was rounded out by a 2-0 defeat away at Chelsea.