Craven Cottage in need of more variations as club prepare for top-flight football after four years in the ChampionshipSlavisa Jokanovic opted for some sporting cross-pollination when asked whether, after two and a half years of battles won and lost, Fulham’s promotion from the Championship felt especially sweet. “Like in tennis, we lost one match point,” he said. “But today we smashed the second match point. We are a Premier League team.”They are, and Jokanovic could feel welcome to all the emphatic language he liked. A double-fault would have been crushing for Fulham, whose charge towards automatic promotion blew up against Birmingham on a hard, well-grown pitch that perplexed their players and seemed to have laid bare a soft underbelly. Instead their manager can reflect on deserved victory over forces that had at one stage cast his tenure into doubt and could sense that, having so successfully got his own way once, he has enough credit built up to get it again. Related: Fulham promoted to Premier League after play-off win over Aston Villa Continue readingreadfullarticle
