It would be difficult to describe any English football fanbase as truly unique, but there are undoubtedly different characteristics that separate club from club.
Those characteristics can be defined by history, success, geography, or class. Some have become inflated stereotypes; Arsenal’s fans, for example, have a reputation for being jumped-up internet keyboard warriors (be kind in the comments), while Newcastle United supporters are thought of as extremely passionate, long-suffering (until recently), fond of taking their tops off and having tattoos of Alan Shearer.
Then there’s Fulham. They eat cheese on trains.
You may have seen the social media posts before, but they’re always worth recapping.
Cheeseboard and wine. ✅
Into the quarter finals. ✅
What a night to be Fulham. 😎 https://t.co/n0jn6CSQCv
— Fulham Football Club (@FulhamFC) November 1, 2023
If you’ve ever been on an intercity train in England late on a Saturday morning, the scene of football fans drinking, eating, and generally being loud and/or lairy is one you’ll be familiar with.
Some may be drinking coffee, but chances are if it’s a group of mostly lads travelling to an away match on a train, they’ll be drinking cans of warm, reasonably-priced lager and eating crisps.
Not Fulham, though, according to the internet. Hailing from the leafy suburbs of south-west London, Fulham fans are used to the finer things in life. Their stadium, with millionaire houses up the road, boasts a boutique Riverside stand serving champagne with a food menu curated by Michelin star chefs and a soon-to-be-unveiled rooftop pool.
The food and drinks Fulham fans taking whilst travelling up to Everton for the game tonight.
🍾🍸🧀 pic.twitter.com/q7a3pNBcAR
— Football Away Days (@FBAwayDays) December 19, 2023
And their fans, as the viral tweets would have you suggest, are a class above the rest of English football’s riff raff.
Fulham fans on the train up to Leicester
The games gone@FulhamishPod @Awaydays23 @FBAwayDays @FulhamFC pic.twitter.com/tUzkfxjYwS
— Rob Trog (@1troggy_FFC) January 18, 2025
Or are they? When The Athletic boards the Sunday morning service from London St Pancras to the East Midlands for Fulham’s trip to face Nottingham Forest, the predominant snack being eaten by Fulham supporters is sausage rolls from a popular bakery whose name rhymes with dregs, and they’re mostly drinking cans of a pale French lager which famously dates back to 1664.
Conversation topics centre less around what japes the chaps used to get up to at boarding school or what happened in the previous night’s rugby, and more about how everyone on the train wants Spurs to go down.
The atmosphere at Nottingham Railway Station couldn’t exactly be classed as intimidating, with a fairly small police presence guiding the away fans onto the concourse, but it’s distinctly football-based. The young lads in hooded jackets down their lagers so they can put them in the bin on the platform (say what you like about Fulham fans, they always clean up after themselves) with guttural chants of, “Youuuuu Whiiiiiites,” while one red-faced bloke is so drunk he almost walks into a post.
It’s almost unruly… not the picture you get from social media.
Is it always like this? “I think what you see online is a bit of a stereotype,” Fulham fan Charlie says.
“Don’t get me wrong, there are some posh Fulham fans, and I’ve seen a bottle of wine being shared on a train before with some posh snacks, but not a cheeseboard yet.
“I think some elements of that ‘Fulham fan’ characterisation exist, and it’s definitely a friendly fanbase on the whole, which I’m proud of, but mostly we’re just pretty normal football fans, especially the away crowd.”
Perhaps it’s the home crowd that is a bit different. After all, one was once pictured cutting up a full Victoria Sponge on one of Craven Cottage’s old wooden seats.
Fulham lead Chelsea 1-0 in the West London Derby at Craven Cottage! ⚪️🔵
Hopefully this fella is having a celebratory Victoria sponge at half time…. pic.twitter.com/IXembpyNfR
— Coral (@Coral) April 20, 2025
And yes, they don’t really do “manager out” campaigns, you won’t hear them booing very much, and they won’t appear on any top 10 football fan arrest lists. In the reactionary modern age where opinions change with the wind and managers now last weeks rather than months, that’s a good thing, surely.
“Fulham fans might buy a bottle of Champagne to be funny and ironic on an away day train, but the Victoria sponge guy, I can’t defend that, that was just incredible,” Sammy James, founder and host of the Fulhamish podcast, tells The Athletic.
Perhaps their celebrity fans don’t help the reputation; Hugh Grant and Richard Osman are as middle England as tea and scones at a parish council meeting.
It’s a far cry from Citizen Smith, the late 1970s sitcom in which lead character Wolfie Smith, a loud and proud Fulham fan, was a self-styled Marxist, urban guerrilla and man of the people.
But then Fulham used to be different back then, a small, lower league club with attendances around the 10,000 mark (and down to an average of 4,000 in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the team dropped to the third and fourth tiers).
“Fulham are not a big club historically, there’s not an element of us thinking we deserve to be at the very top of the table,” James adds.
“Fulham was a small, rattle-around type club, underdeveloped and underinvested for years. People in the 1980s and 1990s had to fight for the club and keep it afloat, which goes against the modern image.
“In terms of size, Fulham could be Charlton, Charlton could be Fulham, there’s not a huge amount between us when you look at the clubs and the fanbases.
“With the cheeseboards, etc, Fulham fans have mostly played up to the stereotype rather than get annoyed.
“It’s not something that really existed much before social media. West Ham used to come to Fulham and chant; ‘Does your butler know you’re here?’ But (before then) I never realised Fulham fans were particularly seen as posh, maybe because I’d grown up around it, I didn’t know any different.
“When I’m in the Hammersmith End, I don’t feel like I’m in the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race (which takes place nearby).”
Fulham Ultras getting ready for Palace away pic.twitter.com/XrCHWzdyMc
— The Beak of Beak Street 🏆 🏆 (@CFO4TAG) January 1, 2026
The owner doesn’t help the stereotype, either. Billionaire Shahid Khan, who purchased Fulham from (now disgraced and deceased) Mohamed Al-Fayed in 2013, has attempted to push the club in a particular direction, what with the exclusive Riverside complex, but also with ticket prices.
Fulham not only have the most expensive season ticket in the Premier League (£3,084 in the Riverside Stand), but matchday tickets can regularly set fans back £100 or more and have been labelled as “hideously expensive”, with protests stretching back to pre-Covid times.
Why would a mid-table Premier League club charge such high prices and build a stand with a swimming pool?
Khan said last year: “For Fulham, we have to optimise our key attributes; the richest, most-educated fanbase in English football. Geographically, it’s in a beautiful location, so we can serve the community on non-match days.”
It’s a quote that riled many fans, some of whom have been priced out of attending games at Craven Cottage.
“I think that was a huge misstep from Shahid,” James says. “He misread the room and thought Fulham fans would take that as a compliment.
“We don’t mind doing the joke about the cheeseboards, but if you callously analyse the situation, it reveals so much when he said that. He said the quiet part loud.”
Ticket prices are unlikely to reduce anytime soon, especially with the team almost certain to stay in the Premier League for what would be a fourth successive season back in the top flight.
“I feel quite uncomfortable with it,” James adds. “I’ve been fuming with Fulham’s ticket prices for years.
“We’re comfortable with maximising revenue and cashing in on our location, but too much of it seeps into the actual strategy of the club. Prices are horrendous and have driven people away, there’s no doubt about that.
“Is there a disconnect between the owners and many fans? Definitely.”
Social media suggests they’re brie-eating Champagne quaffers, Khan thinks they’re the richest fanbase in the country, but after a drab 0-0 draw away at Forest, watching Fulham fans rush back to the train station dodging puddles in the torrential Nottingham rain, one of whom is wearing a Stone Island jacket, they look like pretty normal football folk.
Unless they’re just hurrying to buy some cheese for the journey home.